[HN Gopher] Temu pulls its U.S. Google Shopping ads
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Temu pulls its U.S. Google Shopping ads
Author : rexbee
Score : 355 points
Date : 2025-04-14 23:43 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (searchengineland.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (searchengineland.com)
| maxilevi wrote:
| temu and shein are cooked
| linotype wrote:
| Less cheap junk flowing into the US sounds like a win to me.
| Maybe clothes should be more expensive and better quality.
| Eduard wrote:
| Also less affordable electronics
| meowkit wrote:
| There is also an argument that we should have fewer
| electronics too...
| roxolotl wrote:
| It is very interesting how if there was a genuine attempt
| at degrowth this is potentially a good start.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It sure is funny how the party that has spent 2 decades
| screaming at anyone they could that "climate change isn't
| real" and "the people saying we should output less carbon
| are REALLY just degrowth cultists and we can consume
| everything forever with no issues" are outright,
| willfully, destroying the American economy in such a way
| that average americans WILL have to consume less
| mcphage wrote:
| Too bad that's not the argument being made by people
| pushing the current policies, instead of the idea that
| this will magically lead to us having more and better
| things.
| EasyMark wrote:
| I don't think so. There is an argument for -individuals-
| buying too much electronics and they should revisit that,
| but it's not anyone's business other those people.
| Tanking the economy and destroying lives "just becuz
| consumers" is a really really bad way to run the country.
| Just giving back and going back to horse and buggy while
| China eats your lunch is not a good thing, because soon
| you will be making "cheap trinkets" for them
| linotype wrote:
| Even more important in creating a more closed loop system
| with less waste. Some Android phones are e-waste before
| they hit a year or two.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Tangent. I got into building hi-fi tube amplifiers some
| years back. Part of it was a kind of nostalgia for the days
| of Heath-Kit which I am only just old enough to remember
| the company's sunsetting years.
|
| It was a fun few years deep-diving into the various
| amplifier topologies, buying NOS vacuum tubes on eBay,
| looking through electronics flea markets for parts. I made
| several amps, tried different tubes, topologies....
| Eventually I settled on a small stereo amp and designed a
| PCB for it, created a small kit even.
|
| Using a drill press in the garage, a table saw to cut
| aluminum sheet stock down, even learning to powder-coat
| parts in a toaster-oven I picked up from Walmart, I made
| increasingly nicer looking amps. With two large output
| transformers and an even large power transformer they were
| fairly heavy beasts.
|
| Nonetheless, though I built them a decade or more ago,
| every one of the amplifiers I built are still in use today.
| The music I am listening to at this moment is coming from
| one. Another is down in my "lab". I have given several away
| to friends, co-workers in the past.
|
| I guess the reason for the tangent was to say that I did
| indeed find that when you have (or make) a thing of real
| quality it can last ... perhaps a life time?
|
| And thinking again a little nostalgically, I like that too
| about electronics just up to the post-modern era: a new
| electronics purchase might have cost you a paycheck or two,
| but you got I think more mileage out of that device.
|
| EDIT: come to think of it, the heavy iron transformers are
| from the U.S., the tubes NOS from U.S. WWII bombers. I
| didn't built them of course with tariffs in mind, but
| surprisingly they are not so cost-dependent on overseas
| suppliers.
|
| And here's a photo of the finished amp (from when I once
| considered selling the kits): https://imgur.com/PBKOQMk
| beepboopboop wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, that's really cool and something I
| wish I had the time/skill/patience for. The amp looks
| great and love the name - might have to dust off the
| tools for a "Now and Then" model.
| tananaev wrote:
| Now I need to pay 10x for a USB cable, a charger etc.
| ryao wrote:
| Monoprice has low cost cables.
| markrages wrote:
| ...for now.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| Monoprice cables are made in China. They'll also cost
| 10x.
| maxerickson wrote:
| At least we can rest assured that they will be more
| expensive.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| I already buy a lot of clothes at least partially made in
| OECD states. Even with that "partially" doing a lot of work
| and my avoiding paying extra for "fancy" brand names... I
| don't think Americans earning closer to median household
| income are gonna be happy about paying the kind of prices I
| pay.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Here you go: enjoy your $120 American jeans:
| https://originusa.com/collections/jeans (Oh look its on sale
| 20$ off...yay :/ )
|
| The sale discount is the entire amount I was able to buy my
| non American jeans for. :/
|
| I guess I can make due with one pair for the week...or wash
| them each day(oh wait thats gotten more expensive as well).
| k4rli wrote:
| Proper jeans aren't really washed more than once a month or
| at all. Especially every day. They also will last for years
| therefore buying 1-3 pairs a year means your wardrobe will
| have plenty.
|
| Maybe local production will get cheaper once more people
| start keeping their money in local communities. Sending it
| to China is just awful for your country/region and kills
| local businesses.
|
| Disclaimer: from Europe so I don't care about USA at all.
| It's still having the same effect here
| runako wrote:
| > Maybe local production will get cheaper once more
| people start keeping their money in local communities.
|
| Is the thinking here that increased scale would allow
| production to get cheaper? How would this account for the
| fact that production was scaled here, but was not cost-
| competitive when it was operating at scale? What's
| different now?
| buzer wrote:
| Let's say currently it costs $15 to make thing 1m units
| of X in China and $50 to make 10k of them in the USA. USA
| could be scaled to make 50k of them for $40 and 100k for
| $30. 1m could cost like $25. There are people for who are
| ready to pay more for local products so the current
| production volume makes sense, but majority of people
| will go for cheaper option when given the chance so it
| doesn't make sense to scale up the production currently.
| If the import cost of the item goes above local
| production cost and there is still enough demand for the
| item, it can make sense to scale up that production even
| if you cannot compete with the China made things
| internationally.
|
| Of course that assumes your own costs (like raw
| materials) do not increase at least on the same scale and
| that you can rely on the situation being long-term thing
| (i.e. will last years rather than weeks) as costs include
| your CapEx on things like new machines.
| runako wrote:
| > say currently it costs $15 to make thing 1m units of X
| in China and $50 to make 10k of them in the USA. USA
| could be scaled to make 50k of them for $40 and 100k for
| $30. 1m could cost like $25.
|
| So here we are assuming that we could get a 50% reduction
| in cost by scaling to 1m units of a thing. The problem
| with this logic is that many product categories currently
| made overseas were produced domestically at scale until
| relatively recently.
|
| This assumption also appears to imply that the goods in
| question either have a very low labor input or are
| produced using automation that is not available to
| Chinese manufacturers.
|
| Reframing my initial question, what advantages would a US
| manufacturer have today that they didn't have in e.g.
| 1990 that would allow them to manufacture for only 66%
| more than the same manufacturing in China?
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| > Proper jeans aren't really washed more than once a
| month or at all.
|
| I've had a lot of people say this to me. I've known their
| policy on washing jeans without them ever having to tell
| me, though.
|
| People become noseblind to their own stench.
| Unfortunately, it's not easy to ignore the stench of
| someone else wearing pants with a month of sweat and
| fecal bacteria soaked into them. I know lots of people
| also only wash their coats once a year, and trust me,
| being more resistant to stinking isn't the same as being
| completely immune to stinking.
|
| Wash your clothes. The idea of not washing them is a meme
| and it's incredible how many people have fallen for it
| lately.
| blitzar wrote:
| > kills local businesses
|
| The business-to-consumer businesses, which take the
| largest markup, employ the most people and pay the
| highest wages in the supply chain, have thrived under
| this system.
|
| It's not the customers that demand products be made in
| China, it's these "local" businesses.
| EasyMark wrote:
| the thing is that life is about freedom of choice, I didn't
| buy they cheap junk, I'm fairly normal. I might be the
| occasional hobby board off alibaba express a couple times a
| year. Choice is good, not bad.
| LaundroMat wrote:
| Maybe the law should impose quality and environmental
| standards instead of tariffs. But no, that would hurt
| domestic businesses.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| The market does what people want. Fast fashion is exactly
| what people want because fashion has always been changing
| fast and about the "new thing" and people like to be able to
| buy new stuff all the time.
| astar1 wrote:
| too little too late for Forever 21 and it's 350 locations which
| once employed 43,000 people at it's peak:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/17/forever-21-files-for-second-...
|
| The temu/shein loophole should been closed ages ago.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| It is pretty crazy how worker unfriendly US trade policy has
| been for so long.
| blitzar wrote:
| They need to get their priorities straight - stop directing
| trade policy towards tech companies employing 1000's of
| workers on $250,000 a year and start building factories
| employing 100's or people on 25c an hour.
| yonran wrote:
| > The temu/shein loophole should been closed ages ago.
|
| Or the US should figure out how to get domestic shipping
| rates to be as cheap as the rates that Chinese shippers pay
| to ship to the US.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| That would probably require that they receive federal
| funding to subsidize postage rates, which is unfortunately
| not going to happen (especially not under DeJoy).
| yonran wrote:
| Yes, perhaps the government should subsidize (or allow
| states to subsidize) the fixed costs of mail, just as we
| subsidize the fixed costs of roads, so that our business
| can be competitive. Is this what China does domestically,
| or what the US does when we charge for international
| shipping? Point is, we should at least list all the ways
| that we can be more competitive, rather than cheering
| isolationism that makes us all worse off.
| CubsFan1060 wrote:
| He resigned last month.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| Ah, yeah, just in time to be replaced by another Trump
| appointee to similar or worse results.
| narism wrote:
| International shipping from China to the US is subsidized
| by USPS under the Universal Postal Union rules since China
| is classified as a developing country. Terminal dues to the
| US have been increasing over the last 5 years to compensate
| for this.
|
| https://www.ecomcrew.com/why-china-post-and-usps-are-
| killing...
| miningape wrote:
| It's still crazy to me that we classify the second
| largest economy as a developing country. Especially when
| said "developing" country is trying to flex it's muscles
| over the world stage and attack its neighbors.
|
| China can either remain a developing country subject to
| rules imposed by developed countries. Or it can join the
| developed countries and shape those rules. It can't do
| both.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| They tried closing the loophole a month ago. It was such a
| burden trying to track and collect tariffs on small shipments
| they gave up.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I'm surprised the Chinese sellers are able to compete for
| fast fashion. Clothes are the one thing I don't really buy
| online because getting sizing right is already hard even when
| you're not dealing with Temu-style "well actually we said
| there's a +- 25 tolerance in the fine print and this is
| within tolerance" bullshit.
|
| AliExpress is indispensable for small technical items. If
| they're available locally at all, shipping included they'd
| often cost 10-20x as much.
| ljf wrote:
| No idea about Shein, but I was shocked how easy/good Temu
| return policy was. My wife bought some rugs and some prints
| and they were not as described/pictured.
|
| Took a minute in the app to generate a qr code, then I had
| it to the post shop the same day and they refunded within 3
| days.
|
| I wouldn't (personally) buy clothes to wear normally from
| them, but something like beach shoes or a poncho for a
| festival I'd maybe get there.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| TIL Temu has a return policy. I thought the return policy
| was "throw it in the trash and be out the money (albeit
| 1/10th of what you would have paid in a regular store)".
| globular-toast wrote:
| People are happy to just try stuff on at home then deal
| with returns or accept the loss if it doesn't fit or look
| good.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| It's not fast-fashion they are competing with -- they
| invented ultra-fast-fashion. Their platforms (Shein and
| Temu) are fully geared towards allowing manufacturers to
| jump on board the latest hypes and trends and have a
| saleable product on there within a week or so, to sell for
| a few weeks until it is no longer trending.
|
| You want a 'My tariffs did that' T-shirt? Temu.
|
| https://www.temu.com/search_result.html?search_key=tariffs%
| 2...
|
| Local store chains can't match that velocity.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| If the _de minimus_ rule is in-fact suspended on May 2nd, yes.
| Hasn't happened yet, so who knows.
|
| Amazon and other US selling platforms are also in trouble,
| given how much of their income is from drop shippers.
| throw310822 wrote:
| Well, given how many of their products come from China,
| right? How many of the products on sale on Amazon are partly
| or entirely produced in China? Those will have 125% (145? How
| mush is it today?) import duty on them, unless they're
| electronics.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I wonder what percentage of their sales has been in the US.
| viraptor wrote:
| 43% in 2023 https://ecdb.com/blog/temu-revenue/4995
|
| They may not be toast, but I suspect there are many panicked
| planning meetings happening now. (Unless they were clever and
| had a plan ready for a while)
| sixseven wrote:
| They did have a plan. Temu/Shein used to ship directly from
| China, handling the shipping themselves for the sellers on
| their platforms.
|
| Since a year or two ago (or even earlier), they started
| accepting (and encouraging) sellers to handle the shipping
| themselves (while still maintaining a fast shipping time) by
| giving those sellers more traffic.
|
| In order to have fast shipping time, it basically mean the
| sellers need to have warehouses (or 3rd party warehouses) in
| the USA. It's easier for the sellers to workaround the
| tariffs when they are shipping in bulk to the USA.
|
| The prices will be higher for sure, but it will be a lot
| lower than people are expecting.
|
| Not sure how well the plan will work. Just what I heard from
| people working in the industry.
| glimshe wrote:
| Good riddance. I'd rather have fewer things I care more about. If
| we rethink our consumption, we could become happier, need less
| space and spend less money even at higher prices. And when we do
| need to buy things, we'll be either supporting local workers or
| friendly nations.
| AstroBen wrote:
| Good for you, but it's not all about rabid consumption. My
| girlfriend has been into jewelry making and ordered a lot of
| stuff off temu, which she gave away the end product to friends
| and family. That'll most likely be prohibitively expensive at
| this point
| glimshe wrote:
| She could give cards, food items or hugs. You don't need to
| cover people in cheap temu stuff to show you love them.
| AstroBen wrote:
| Ah yes, replace a creative hobby with.. hugs
|
| I think you'd be surprised at the quality
| blitzar wrote:
| I don't think people are aware their <insert high status
| luxury brand> came from the same place.
| Symbiote wrote:
| The luxury brand ensures the safety of the product, and
| as the importer is liable if they fail to do that.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Temu has notoriously low standards when it comes to jewelry
| and other jewelry related items. Reddit threads are full of
| horror stories about toxic materials being used for these
| items. Be careful what you give out to friends and family.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Reddit threads are full of horror stories_
|
| Reddit is full of horror stories about everything. Mostly
| because it gets eyeballs. I'm open--almost receptive--to
| the claim that Temu jewellery contains significant
| quantities of toxic materials. But we should hold ourselves
| to a higher standard than Reddit comments.
| einarfd wrote:
| I haven't seen the Reddit posts. But I've seen the same
| in Articles in the Norwegian press, where they bought a
| bunch of random Temu stuff and sent it for safety
| testing. The result where not great and the results for
| the jewelry was really scary.
| nolist_policy wrote:
| Anything that has skin contact like rings, clothing,
| toys, etc. I wouldn't but form Temu/AliExpress. That's
| where I draw the line.
| aegypti wrote:
| Do tariffs raise the quality of domestic substitutions, or do
| we simply pay more?
| whatever1 wrote:
| Either you will pay more for domestic producers or (more
| likely) you will not pay at all since either domestic
| production will not ramp up for niche things, or you will not
| be willing to pay hikes domestic prices for the same utility.
| Aurornis wrote:
| For many products, domestically manufactured substitutes
| still have some inputs that come from international
| suppliers.
|
| Could be some raw materials, the machines that make it, or
| the packaging. Now everything is going to be massively more
| expensive and it's going to have impacts even on domestically
| manufactured goods.
|
| There's also the substitution effect, where heavy tariffs on
| one thing will increase demand on substitutes and therefore
| raise their prices.
|
| It's really bad policy all around. Nobody who has any
| familiarity with manufacturing thinks it's going to encourage
| more domestic manufacturing because the tariffs suddenly
| restricted your ability to buy inputs and machines at
| reasonable prices. You're better off building a factory in
| another country to service global demand.
| bamboozled wrote:
| I have a friend who started a snowboard factory recently,
| in the USA, he was able to do this _because_ of Chinese
| made CNC machines and presses that were half the price and
| had great support.
|
| Now everything he needs from them to keep his factory going
| is going to be ridiculously more expensive, probably
| screwing over his business as well.
|
| This factory wouldn't have got off the ground if it wasn't
| for Chinese made machines.
| blitzar wrote:
| lower quality, higher price.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| Tariffs lower the quality and increase the prices of domestic
| substitutes. There is no competition. Tariffs are how
| business is done in third-world countries like India.
| Production of everything is banned/controlled, except for the
| few buddies of the government in power.
| EasyMark wrote:
| So destroying the economy is worth making a few people feel
| better about minimizing their life? Because that's what is
| happening. How about people exercise some common sense and not
| buy things they don't need as opposed to millions of people
| becoming homeless and military aggression between the USA and
| China getting much more likely
| UtopiaPunk wrote:
| Ooof, vote blue vs Temu is a dire state of politics
| gradus_ad wrote:
| So throwing society into chaos with a sudden opium ban is
| worth making a few self righteous officials feel better about
| controlling everyone's lives? Because that's what this
| crackdown is bringing. How about people exercise some
| willpower and moderation with the pipe, instead of driving
| the entire opium trade underground, creating violence between
| smugglers, ruining the livelihoods of countless ordinary
| people caught in the middle, and practically begging the
| Western powers to escalate their military actions against us
| when their precious trade is disrupted?
| anothernewdude wrote:
| I doubt anyone is seriously arguing the tariffs as
| implemented are the solution.
|
| On the other hand, if you're thinking all opposition to the
| tariffs need to agree then you're deluding yourself (not
| trying to be antagonistic here, but it's dangerous to be
| blind to alternatives.)
|
| For instance, a smaller tariff on completed Luxury goods and
| a removal of the Temu exception could've easily been the play
| and potentially could've been done without much fanfare (by
| someone who wasn't Trump obviously)
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| Some people may feel that their economy was already destroyed
| when manufacturing was moved to China. Ever drive around
| Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, etc? So many dead towns, thanks
| to jobs moving elsewhere.
|
| I think ending the pipeline of landfill fodder from Temu is a
| great thing. That kind of consumerism is like eating a diet
| of pure sugar. Feels good for a second, but bad for the
| consumer, environment and economy.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Temu is pure junk, Im glad it's on its way out. However, im
| more worried about the economy at a grand scale and with
| tarrif wars it's not looking too good for anyone.
| bamboozled wrote:
| I was one of those people who always purchased American
| when things were being off shored, and I still do as often
| as I can, especially tools.
|
| Do you know who made the Chinese made goods thing a
| reality? People from Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana etc.
| People went into a store, saw the cheaper item, often
| inferior Chinese item on the shelf and bought it instead of
| the domestically produced item, even the stuff that said
| "Designed in America, Made in China". They did this because
| it was cheaper.
|
| I think you're mistaken if you think some external force
| "did this to us".
|
| We all do it, some items are just not worth the exuberant
| price tag, especially if you're only going to use something
| occasionally.
|
| At least from my observation, the balance was actually not
| so bad in the last 5 years or so, plenty of good American
| options available and cheaper Chinese stuff when that was
| appropriate. I think America will be worse off from this
| because the cost of so many things will be way higher now,
| DIY for example will be off the table for a lot of people.
| The cost of a drill will become ridiculous, for example.
|
| _I think ending the pipeline of landfill fodder from Temu
| is a great thing. That kind of consumerism is like eating a
| diet of pure sugar. Feels good for a second, but bad for
| the consumer, environment and economy._
|
| There would've been other ways to go about solving the
| environmental impacts of Temu than this. In my opinion.
| slavik81 wrote:
| > we'll be either supporting local workers or friendly nations
|
| Are there any friendly nations left?
| protocolture wrote:
| God I hope not.
| simion314 wrote:
| >Are there any friendly nations left?
|
| From Trump POV: Ruzzia
| SXX wrote:
| What about buying some largest-in-the-world microcontrollers
| from Russia?
| jajko wrote:
| so called macrocontrollers, indestructible if Ivan on that
| day didnt start drinking early morning
| seydor wrote:
| but they are not giving them time to rethink ...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If we rethink our consumption, we could become happier_
|
| If we wished upon a star that humans were better a lot of
| problems would go away. In the real world, poor people will
| make do and those with resources will buy smuggled goods. I'm
| already diverting a spring skiing trip to Canada because it's
| cheaper to buy kit there than here.
| bamboozled wrote:
| This is what will happen, it's why _Americans_ and American
| got into the cheaper, Chinese made goods thing in the first
| place, there was a _LOT_ of demand for cheaper stuff.
|
| People will just do less, become more poor and have less
| opportunities or work around the system by smuggling things
| from Canada or something.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Maybe there was more demand for cheaper stuff in the US
| because wages had been rather stagnant in relation to
| production efficiency for decades?
|
| I mean you're entire premise is not great at all.
| Capitalistic markets require competition to work. The US
| itself has mostly given up on 'competitive product'
| competition and instead fight each other with buyouts and
| other financial funding means.
|
| Kicking China out of the market will just make our goods
| more expensive and people will do less and become more poor
| while the investor class gets a little bit richer.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > If we rethink our consumption, we could become happier, need
| less space and spend less money even at higher prices.
|
| I can't believe how many people are trying to put a positive
| spin on the government imposing massive taxation on people's
| right to buy things from other countries.
|
| It's easy to sneer at junk fashion from Temu or whatever, but
| access to cheap tools and parts was the lifeblood of hobbyists
| and experimenters across the country.
|
| It's not just cheap clothes from Temu. This administration just
| took away your right to buy anything cheaply internationally.
| That's not a good thing.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I think two things can be true at the same time: these taxes
| are ridiculous, and ordering a 75-cents part from the other
| side of the planet is a massive waste of resources.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| Yes, and it created an actual problem that (knowingly or
| not) Trump was responding to - America essentially was
| getting further and further in debt to enable such high
| consumption.
|
| I think we'll find that quite a bit of "American
| Exceptionalism" has been low interest borrowing. I'm not
| sure to what level, but I think anyone who relies on the
| S&P 500 as their only investment is going to be
| disappointed in the future decades of returns.
| genewitch wrote:
| The futures graph for S&P looks real close to the
| national debt graph, and both look like they're at peak
| bubble.
|
| Probably doesn't mean anything.
| jjcob wrote:
| > ordering a 75-cents part from the other side of the
| planet is a massive waste of resources
|
| Is it really that bad? Is it better to package the part in
| retail packaging, ship them in bulk to international
| warehouses, ahead of time, store them for months, then put
| them in a new package when someone orders them, and mail
| them through a local postal service.
|
| Versus just stuffing the part in a tiny envelope and
| sending it directly to the customer? No re-packaging and
| storage required.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| I genuinely can't tell; it's a good question. If the
| sellers on AliExpress could ever be arsed to use
| recyclable packaging instead of four layers of plastic
| baggies and wrap it would be even more interesting.
| djmips wrote:
| And if recycling in North America wasn't so often a sham.
| nkrisc wrote:
| You're correct, but sometimes bad things accidentally have a
| few good things
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| You were always free to buy fewer things you care more about.
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| This isn't true, because the subsidized stuff from China
| drove medium-quality choices out of the market.
|
| Try to buy some nicer jeans or T-shirts. The choices are
| stuff made as cheaply as possible, brand name stuff made as
| cheaply as possible but marked up like it isn't, and actual
| quality clothes at 15x the price of the cheapest stuff. Most
| of the US clothing manufacturers have pivoted to the high-end
| just to survive or moved production overseas and are coasting
| along on their brand reputation.
| ragazzina wrote:
| >The choices are stuff made as cheaply as possible, brand
| name stuff made as cheaply as possible but marked up like
| it isn't
|
| How are the tariffs going to change this? The incentive for
| the US clothing manufacturers now is to offer the lowest
| quality possible, at a similar but slightly lower prices
| than the tariffed prices.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| Try buying a decent toaster, I've found exactly the same.
| $20, $30, and $50 options all using the same internal
| mechanism with a different style of shell and minor changes
| to the control circuit, or $200-$1k models that are mostly
| marketed for commercial kitchens/hospitality use. Not a
| whole lot in between.
| protocolture wrote:
| I agree. There should be a global blockade of the USA to return
| the standard of living to the stone age. Why stop at tariffs?
| pammf wrote:
| Well, from outside it seems that the list of friendly nations
| keep getting smaller and smaller... and good luck replacing the
| vast majority of your supply chain with local workers. Just
| look where all the products you currently have were made.
| animitronix wrote:
| Finally
| geor9e wrote:
| I loved temu, aliexpress, and shein. I probably averaged 1 item
| per day arriving to my house, for years and years. Mostly little
| electronics parts and specialized tools for my workshop. Buying
| from Amazon or locally would have cost me 10x as much. Obviously
| it's over now. Anyone getting a package in May will be hit with a
| $75-$150 or more bill per package, even a 75 cent envelope will
| be charged +$75. I feel bad for the unaware people still
| ordering. I'm surprised the websites don't even acknowledge this
| yet. I guess they are hoping for a reversal in the next 2 weeks.
| roxolotl wrote:
| Wait why would $0.75 have a $75 charge? Is there a minimum
| tariff that's not as widely reported reported on? That would be
| a 10000% tariff. Or is this just exaggeration
| throwaway7394 wrote:
| There's a minimum charge, as well a percentage.
|
| > Washington will also increase the per postal item fee on
| goods entering after May 2 and before June 1 to $100 from the
| planned $75. Parcels entering after June 1 will pay a fee of
| $200 per item instead of $150 announced previously, according
| to the Wednesday order.
|
| ref.
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-10/trump-
| aga...
| roxolotl wrote:
| Wow I'm genuinely surprised that's not getting more press.
| That's absolutely going to shock the hell out of some
| people.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Its going to be great. I can't wait to see how MAGA
| explains this one away. Eventually the pain will be
| enough that hopefully the bubble breaks with some of
| them.
| marticode wrote:
| They'll blame Biden and Soros, as usual.
| roshin wrote:
| If what Trump says is any sign to how MAGA explains it,
| then the answer is: if you don't want to pay those large
| fees, buy local. Sure the cost will go up, and
| significantly so in the "short term" (however long that
| is ...), but in the long term we will have more local
| manufacturing.
|
| disclaimer: I personally don't agree with that, so no
| need to argue against me. Just answering OP's question,
| because I feel that it is important to understand the
| other side.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| And its going to be fine. Amish mostly make everything
| they need, have no debt, no trade deficits, have lots of
| kids and are thriving. I'm not saying this to be snarky,
| all Americans can be as happy as billionaines:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/if-you-want-to-be-
| happier-sh...
|
| "Is it possible to step off the hedonic treadmill? The
| best approach involves silencing our desires, restraining
| the insatiable appetite of our dopamine neurons. This is
| what the Amish have done. They have learned to live
| without modern consumerism. They don't use cars, reject
| the Internet, avoid the mall, and prefer a quite
| permanence to heady growth. The end result is a happiness
| boom. The Amish turn out to be as satisfied with their
| lives as members of the Forbes 400. Furthermore, their
| rates of depression are more than ten fold lower than the
| rest of the American population. The Amish are content
| because they have learned to ignore their dopaminergic
| pleas for more."
| https://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/03/16/happiness-
| wealth-...
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Furthermore, their rates of depression are more than
| ten fold lower than the rest of the American population.
|
| One wonders if this is simply due to under-diagnosis.
| gblargg wrote:
| My theory is that all our modern junk doesn't necessarily
| cause depression, but it allows us to take on more
| chronic depression and other mental problems
| (distraction, dopamine hits, etc.) Like the way added
| safety features to cars just caused drivers to drive
| worse to compensate.
| gaiagraphia wrote:
| >under diagnosis
|
| Telling the Amish they're depressed sounds like a
| wonderful business oppportunity! Think of all the follow
| up products and services!
| echoangle wrote:
| What would happen if everyone lived like the Amish
| though? I'm assuming they are still profiting from modern
| science they wouldn't be able to come up with, right? Or
| are they refusing MRI scans and Chemotherapy too?
| adrianN wrote:
| A lot of people would starve without industrialized
| agriculture.
| xeromal wrote:
| But you could build the hell out of a barn
| potato3732842 wrote:
| I think the point wasn't that that specific example
| scales to the whole nation but more that if that specific
| example works as well as it does at the scale that it
| does than surely some middle ground between "import
| basically every consumer good" and "the amish" would
| scale to the entire nation with acceptable tradeoffs.
| mrheosuper wrote:
| "ignorance is bliss"
| tpm wrote:
| > buy local
|
| I suspect for many imported items there is no local
| manufacturing and there won't be one. Oh well we'll see
| soon how the voters react to that.
| clutchdude wrote:
| Ok - so here's an example I can provide input on.
|
| I have a bunch of white oak from a tree I cut down and
| had milled into lumber.
|
| I wanted to make a bunch of benches for friends/family,
| etc. I have the lumber so all I needed was the bench
| ends/legs.
|
| I looked at the domestic options and it was going to
| cost. I couldn't find anyone that would sell a set of
| legs for under $300 a piece or wanted me to "contact them
| for pricing." and that's all BEFORE shipping.
|
| Keep in mind that your local bigbox store sells an almost
| exact replica of the made in China bench legs with crap
| lumber for $99. It'd be cheaper for me to buy those, junk
| the lumber and use my own.
|
| I then checked alibaba and walked through the process of
| getting RFQ. The competent sellers who knew what I wanted
| and what to do were easy to work with and quick to check
| the various shipping costs - the per unit price would be
| pretty low($20ish even with my low volume order) but
| shipping would be $50-$70 a per set of legs due to the
| weight of the cast iron. BUT, now, even with tariffs,
| that leg would go from $~90 to $180ish AND I'd still be
| well below what the domestic cost is.
|
| If I go forward at all, I'll still probably go with the
| Alibaba folks. I don't see how USA manufacturers will
| suddenly start producing these sort of bulky intermediary
| consumer products anytime soon.
| nkrisc wrote:
| No it won't. It will be either 1) good or 2) somebody
| else's fault.
| gscott wrote:
| I am going to miss getting free seeds from China.
| oth001 wrote:
| Free seeds?
| evan_ wrote:
| Sites like Amazon and probably aliexpress/temu require a
| documented shipment before you can write a review.
| Shippers sometimes send extremely inexpensive stuff like
| seeds to random US/overseas addresses and launder the
| shipping receipt into a fake review for something more
| expensive.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| This sounds fake. Why send seeds, of all things? Why not
| some equally cheap item like electrical wire insulation
| off-cuts, a piece of scrap bubble wrap or just a note (or
| just nothing)? Seeds are likely to set off alarm bells
| for biosecurity at many borders for no benefit.
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| There's so much chaos being flooded out all at once that
| things that massively impact normal people don't have
| time to gain traction in the news. And the moment things
| do make the news, there's an even larger flood of people
| everywhere saying, "Fake news. Didn't happen." followed
| by "So what? How does this affect you personally?" and
| then ending with "This is actually a great thing and
| you're suspicious if you're against this."
| pixl97 wrote:
| "Firehose of falsehood" in action. :/
| paganel wrote:
| Truth be told, the status quo, with 5-dollar packages
| clogging the USPS, was a DoS on-going thing in real
| life/physical form, there had been many posts in here
| detailing that. Yes, it will most probably negatively
| affect a lot of people who were relying on that DoS thing
| to carry on, and, yes, most probably the proposed charges
| are too high, but it was obvious that something needed to
| change.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I don't agree with Tariffs, but the discounts some
| countries get on postage is BS. It should not be cheaper
| to have a parcel delivered from overseas than interstate
| in your own country.
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/876bc3ec-
| aadb-11e8-8253-48106866c...
| threeseed wrote:
| I've seen countless interviews of Trump supporters who
| believe that China is the one paying for it. Which I can
| completely understand because if it is a cost on them it
| would be typically be called a tax.
|
| That said the overwhelmingly majority are shocked but
| believe it's all just a negotiating tactic:
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-trump-
| tariffs-13-04-2025/
| imposterr wrote:
| Some Chinese exporters are definitely splitting the cost
| of these tariffs with their American importer
| counterparts. While this isn't as significant as "China
| pays all the tariffs", it's also not "Americans pay all
| the tariffs".
|
| Though, I haven't seen any analysis on how common this
| is, so the effect might be negligible in terms of how
| much "the Chinese" are paying for these tariffs.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| Every tax, and tariff a tax, is shared between producer
| and consumer depending on elasticity of demand for the
| goods
| stavros wrote:
| Why is that the case? If an item (from every
| manufacturer) costs $5, and there's a new tax on it,
| making it cost $10, why would this be split between buyer
| and seller? The seller needs to make a certain margin on
| it, and it's not like the competition can sell any
| cheaper, or they already would have been.
| immibis wrote:
| The seller doesn't "need" to make any margin on it.
| Margins are set by the free market, and they are what
| they are, no more, no less.
|
| Prices go down when demand goes down, right? Why's that,
| don't sellers need to make a certain margin?
| kergonath wrote:
| If demand is elastic, then the seller has to lower prices
| (and their margin), otherwise people don't buy their
| stuff (because they can do without). In this situation,
| the seller eats the tariffs, That's the case for nice-to-
| have things like luxury goods and entertainment. If the
| seller cannot do that, e.g. because their margins become
| negative, they will just stop doing business (in the US
| or entirely).
|
| The other end of the spectrum is stuff people cannot do
| without, in which case the seller has no incentive to
| lower their margins because their customers don't have a
| choice. Then, tariffs are entirely paid by the buyer.
|
| In reality, everything is in between and accurately
| estimating how much everyone will be paying is very
| difficult. What we can predict with certainty is that
| prices can only go up, and that some businesses will fold
| because they cannot absorb the loss.
| YawningAngel wrote:
| A bunch of potential customers will buy at 5$ but not at
| 15$ so the seller will lose sales and hence money
| rtrgrd wrote:
| +1 I feel like this point really doesn't get mentioned
| enough if at all unless someone did some level of
| economics at high school/uni.
|
| The tariffs are not paid for by the foreign producer and
| domestic consumer alone unless PED=0 or PES is extremely
| large.
| ammo1662 wrote:
| I've come across some other comments on Chinese forums.
| Some importers buy products for 10 RMB from China and
| then sell them in the U.S. for 10 USD. Later, they use
| tariffs as an excuse to raise prices to 15-20 USD. They
| couldn't care less whether you impose 100% or even 200%
| tariffs - they'd still profit unless the tariffs reach
| 1000%.
|
| Also, check out this link[0] some people actually don't
| have many alternatives either.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCS-LS4LUXk
| idle_zealot wrote:
| US "liberal" media is being extremely cagey about what
| and how it reports on this admin. They know they're in
| its crosshairs and are doing this clumsy balancing act of
| trying to retain their relatively left-leaning or
| centrist viewers while trying not to draw any more ire.
| It won't work, of course, and if we continue on this
| trajectory you can expect that they'll change over to
| apologia and ass-kissing or be dismantled.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| I feel like you can just replace liberal with Capitalist
| and you don't need the quotes.
|
| They're trying to retain their audience because you know,
| cash. And making the far right fascists angry by calling
| them autocratic, authoritarians who will deport them,
| would cost money.
|
| No need to make this politics. At this point it's
| basically capitlism against authoritarianism. "Left"
| doesn't exist as a viable political position right now.
| mapt wrote:
| There's a very large political base, particularly of
| young people, that is more than ready for leftist
| politics.
|
| It just doesn't get any funding from the millionaires who
| fund the DNC or the billionaires who fund the GOP. And
| money is how political organizations run. We have too
| much wealth inequality to effectively enfranchise most of
| the population; Capitalism ate democracy, film at 11.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| > At this point it's basically capitlism against
| authoritarianism
|
| Ha. You say that as though those things are incompatible.
| Some capital is putting up token resistance to the rise
| of authoritarianism, but it can't be a strong
| counterforce because that would risk retribution. Instead
| more and more capitalists bend the knee in hopes of
| favorable treatment. That's why I say the likes of CNN
| and NBC will switch to bootlicking before long.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Wow I'm genuinely surprised that's not getting more
| press
|
| It's hard reporting on the current administration, it's
| the classic Russian flood style messaging, where you just
| flood as much (mis)information as you can, and people
| just can't follow.
| Brybry wrote:
| As far as I know, the way it works is shipping companies
| can do the % package value (ad valorem duty) _or_ the flat
| rate per package (specific duty) but have to do the same
| method for _all packages_ and can only change their method
| once a month.[1]
|
| My speculation is the ad valorem duty requires more
| manpower to implement and so that's why there's the
| specific duty option. Especially because they originally
| temporarily halted the de minimis changes due to USPS not
| being able to handle it.
|
| Executive order 14266 is the most recent rates with 120% ad
| valorem or $100 / $200 specific (gated by date as noted
| above). [2]
|
| [1] EO 14256: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/04/furt...
|
| [2] EO 14266: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/04/modi...
| mapt wrote:
| Wait, what?
|
| So I can buy my carton of 120 iphones if I pay a $100
| package fee, instead of $200,000 at the 120% rate?
|
| Alternately: My Chinese excavator only costs $100 in
| tariffs?
|
| Can someone give me pseudocode here?
| detaro wrote:
| Neither of those are going to be postal service packages
| with a De Minimis value (<$800).
| mapt wrote:
| Could you unpack the idea further?
|
| There are plenty of things where Temu charges $2.00 and I
| would be fine paying a 120% tariff on that to bring it to
| $4.40, because Amazon is charging $8.99 and retailers are
| selling a seventy pack for $30.
|
| But I would not be fine paying a $100 tariff to bring it
| to $102.
| margalabargala wrote:
| You did a great job explaining it, what more do you need
| to unpack?
| mapt wrote:
| Am I, in fact, going to be hit with a $100 tariff on a $2
| item ($2+$100=$102) or a $2.40 tariff ($2*1.2=$4.40) ?
|
| I am looking for language like "Whichever is greater" in
| the announcement and I'm not seeing it. Do importers
| choose which to go with? Do customs? It looks like
| before, shipments below $800 were exempt of all tariffs
| under the "De Minimis exemption", and that exemption is
| going away, but I'm still not clear on how the rest of
| this works.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Ah, I see what you're asking.
|
| I just did some digging and cannot find an answer.
| Everything just says "X% or $Y flat fee".
|
| Maybe it's up to the discretion of the administration.
| How much did you donate to Trump's campaign?
| gangstead wrote:
| Back when the tariff was first announced I remember
| seeing a whitehouse.gov announcement saying it was 30%
| with a $25 minimum per package. I can't find that but the
| [newest Fact sheet](https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-
| sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-pr...) dated 4/2/25 just has
| the vaguely worded "either / or".
|
| Then there's
| [avalara.com](https://www.avalara.com/blog/en/north-
| america/2025/02/how-to...) saying on 4/10 that it's 120%
| OR $100, but not clear if filer gets to choose.
|
| The latest I can find is from today (4/15/25) from
| [metro.global](https://metro.global/news/new-tariffs-and-
| the-end-of-de-mini...) that says 120% AND $100 per
| package (rising to $200 June 1st).
|
| Your question is so simply put it seems like there should
| be an easy answer but it seems like there's a lot of
| interpretations on what's going to happen. It's possible
| that all of these sources were true on the day they were
| posted but the rules are continuously changing.
| Brybry wrote:
| In the EO language there is no "whichever is greater",
| the shipping company picks (note this all specifically
| for de minimis, <$800 value, packages).
|
| In EO 14256:
|
| > Transportation carriers delivering shipments to the
| United States from the PRC or Hong Kong sent through the
| international postal network must collect and remit
| duties to CBP under the approach outlined in _either
| subsection (c)(i) or subsection (c)(ii)_ of this section.
| Transportation carriers must apply the same duty
| collection methodology to all shipments; however,
| transportation carriers may change their collection
| methodology once a month or on such other periodic
| timeframe as CBP determines appropriate, upon providing
| 24-hour notice to CBP.
|
| (c)(i) is Ad Valorem Duty and (c)(ii) is Specific Duty
| userbinator wrote:
| How long will it take him to change his mind again? He has
| already exempted a bunch of stuff from tariffs,
| coincidentally the same stuff that is likely to be imported
| because the US doesn't make much of its own of.
| ferfumarma wrote:
| I think the issue is related to postal charges, and the
| reduction (or elimination?) of the "de minimis" exemption
| _plus_ the tarrifs.
| jopsen wrote:
| In Denmark imports have to pay vat (25%), regardless of
| tariffs (goods made in Denmark also charge vat).
|
| But the processing fee for customs is usually 20-40 USD.
| Which can exceed the cost of the package in the first place.
|
| So when possible I always shop within the EU, or maybe the
| US.
| rfmc wrote:
| That's all true, but you are leaving out an important piece
| of information that, at least for AliExpress, the VAT is
| already included in the price and there's no additional
| customs processing fee.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Yeah, you have to try real hard to get a customs
| processing fee on a package from AliExpress. Customs
| literally can't keep up with the fire-hose of packages
| coming in from China, so the current deal is that they,
| AliExpress, charge and pay VAT and the packages just come
| through unscathed.
|
| Order something from the US into Europe? Expect to pay
| customs most of the time. From Great Britain post-Brexit?
| Ditto. China? Rarely.
| rfmc wrote:
| It's all about the VAT collection. I order frequently
| from Amazon Japan. They add the 25% VAT directly at the
| moment of purchase and deliver by DHL to Denmark without
| any extra handling fees. So it's not about china, but
| about the company doing the paperwork required for the
| VAT collection instead of you doing.
|
| And by you I mean PostNord in the case of Denmark
| kalleboo wrote:
| Any business outside the EU can register for the EU One
| Stop Shop scheme and charge the VAT directly and avoid
| fees. Many small time US sellers probably just don't want
| to bother, but big platforms like AliExpress centralize
| it https://skat.dk/en-us/businesses/vat/vat-on-
| international-tr...
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| "Dont want to bother" is generous.
|
| "Dont want to be stuck in the morass of EU red tape" is
| more like it. Not that US red tape is any better, mind
| you, but suffice to say that unless you have massive
| scale, registration schemes will make you ROI negative
| unless you are making >100k in sales per month from the
| country in question.
|
| Some even require registration by region. For example GER
| vs UK vs FR and rest a while back, all needed separate
| registration. And the paperwork is usually in the home
| coun try official language. Ha joke is on you when you
| start getting tax authority messages. They arent saying
| bonjour!
|
| Source: i did this for my company.
| kergonath wrote:
| > From Great Britain post-Brexit? Ditto.
|
| I get stuff delivered from the UK to the EU very
| regularly and all competent sellers handle VAT and duties
| just fine without additional processing fees. Smaller
| companies don't always bother, though, but most of the
| time I don't have to pay customs because everything is
| declared properly.
| kergonath wrote:
| > But the processing fee for customs is usually 20-40 USD.
| Which can exceed the cost of the package in the first
| place.
|
| It depends on who you are buying from. This is the order of
| magnitude of the fee if you let the shipping company handle
| it. It is extortionate and they do it because at this point
| buyers don't have a choice if they want their stuff.
|
| Companies that are used to dealing with foreign customers
| handle taxes themselves and don't charge processing fees.
| rtpg wrote:
| Aliexpress my impression is you can get "useful" stuff that are
| odd but usable. But I've had the impression that temu and shein
| was all "direct to garbage" devices, was this not the case?
| geor9e wrote:
| They sell the same stuff in my experience. I would describe
| Temu as selling the top 10% of AliExpress that's the most
| popular, with faster and more reliable shipping since they
| use huge centralized fulfillment warehouses, similar to
| Amazon warehouses.
| onli wrote:
| Aliexpress also changed a lot there. I'm not sure if it
| goes for all vendors, but my last purchases have been very
| fast. Some even shipped from Europe, but even if from China
| the wait time of several weeks did not happen anymore.
|
| I assume they made a similar change.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| I've only used Temu a few times, but in my limited experience
| it is just Aliexpress but with a slick gamified interface on
| top. Alibaba sellers supplies the same stuff to Aliexpress,
| Temu, a ton of the Instagram ads and even a lot of the cheap
| Amazon stuff.
| blitzar wrote:
| They are all different frontends for the same backend -
| amazon is also a frontend to the same thing but with prices
| 2-3x'd.
| beAbU wrote:
| You can't lump shein and temu in the same bucket. My wife is
| an avid shein user and from what I can tell the quality so
| far is really good for what you pay.
|
| Shein is in reality just an aliexpress/baba wrapper, but they
| put huge amounts of effort into accurate sizing charts for
| their clothing, and their customer reviews system actively
| incentivises buyers to upload pictures of themselves wearing
| the purchased clothing. So as a potential buyer you can
| actually see the piece of clothing being worn by someone with
| a similar body shape than your own.
|
| My impression of temu is they are trying to be as misleading
| as possible with their listings, and the value for money is
| absolutely terrible because of that: you think you are
| getting a 6' xmas tree for $20, but when it arrives it's 6".
| vitorgrs wrote:
| Shein biggest thing is actually AI/ML. As far I remember,
| what they really invested is on the service per see. Shein
| gather data from consumers on internet, on what's the
| latest trends/art, and just create clothes. And they do
| this like, always.
|
| There's no "Summer" or "Winter" season clothes. They just
| update them continually.
| brnt wrote:
| So, the same as Temu.
| vitorgrs wrote:
| Temu "produces" their own clothes, etc? I was under the
| impression that it was just a marketplace.
| brnt wrote:
| They all are. That doesn't mean they don't tell their
| vendors what to produce at what price. That's the
| business model of Chinese fast fashion after all.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| > Shein biggest thing is actually AI/ML. As far I
| remember, what they really invested is on the service per
| see. Shein gather data from consumers on internet, on
| what's the latest trends/art, and just create clothes.
|
| Few years ago there was a trend in online ads showing
| t-shirts and hoodies with "realistic" print ons of
| animals, optical illusions, mazes, etc. Realistic only on
| photos or rather renderings. Felt like some form of
| brainrot. It was all Chinese clone shops or outright
| scams. Luckily the trend is dead now.
| tyleo wrote:
| Are you saying a consumer will pay $75 later if they order a
| package from China now and it comes in May?
| Aurornis wrote:
| There is a minimum fee for packages, yes. At this point I've
| lost track of all the changes but at one point I remember
| seeing $100 or $150 per package under some conditions.
|
| Carriers will also charge a fee for brokering it. USPS has a
| $9 fee, other carriers are higher.
|
| We went from being free to order things internationally to
| having out of control fees and taxes on top of everything.
|
| There's a lot of sneering at Temu and Shein, but the hobbyist
| and electronics worlds are about to get hit extremely hard by
| the lack of access to tools and parts from Aliexpress. It's
| really sad.
| yorwba wrote:
| That there is a minimum fee doesn't necessarily mean the
| customer pays it on arrival. It could also be charged to
| the sender in advance, and if they don't pay, the package
| is simply not delivered at all.
|
| If you could cheaply send stuff to random people to make
| them pay huge fees when they get something they didn't even
| order, that would be quite bad...
| cyberax wrote:
| > If you could cheaply send stuff to random people to
| make them pay huge fees when they get something they
| didn't even order, that would be quite bad...
|
| You can just refuse to accept the item, and it'll be
| returned to the sender or destroyed.
| K0balt wrote:
| Yet that's exactly how it works. Each package will have
| $100 tacked on and in June that goes up to $200. They are
| basically making small packages impossible, so
| individuals / hobby buyers will be cut out completely,
| and a lot of small businesses will lose their supply
| lines. Big businesses will just raise prices to
| compensate... or bite the bullet long enough to put
| everyone else out of business. I suspect this is Walmarts
| plan.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| > the hobbyist and electronics worlds are about to get hit
| extremely hard
|
| Speak for yourself. I am in this world but I am not in USA
| and I won't be subject to your stupid tariffs. Good luck to
| you.
| criddell wrote:
| It doesn't matter when it was ordered, only when it goes
| through customs.
| riku_iki wrote:
| realistically speaking, it is likely not possible to deliver
| envelop from China at 75c cost, its likely someone else is
| paying for your 75c envelops (like taxpayers through
| subsidies).
| ipsum2 wrote:
| You've been downvoted, but you are 100% correct. It is the
| result of the UPU treaty:
| https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/10/us-
| withdrawing-144-y...
| Semaphor wrote:
| I enjoy the cheap shipping (from Aliexpress China
| warehouses to Germany), but I really wish this would be
| improved. It just seems nonsensical. There should be a
| closer relation to actual cost, but paying 4-5EUR for a
| national shipment, versus essentially nothing for Chinese
| shipments, is mad.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| It gets even weirder when you consider the prices of
| shipping even within the EU. Within Germany? EUR3,50 if
| the seller has a good deal with DHL, within the
| Netherlands? EUR4,50 with PostNL. As a normal consumer
| shipping something the price goes up, and when you want
| to ship from the Netherlands to Germany or vice versa?
| EUR9,50 at least. Vinted seems to be the exception
| because of their deal with Mondial Relay, so I can order
| something from Italy for just EUR5 (but they currently
| exclude Germany for that feature for some reason).
|
| ...meanwhile a couple of I2C light sensors, some brass
| book screws, a router bit or two? Free shipping because
| of the (whatever) deal or Ali Choice shipping, and just
| as fast too.
|
| Of course with Shein and Temu this isn't about cheap
| electronics, parts, and tools any more, but wholesale
| environmental destruction by fast-fashion. It wouldn't
| get much worse if the Chinese fashion manufacturers just
| shipped their wares directly to the Atacama desert.
|
| Enjoy this while it lasts Nachbar, no tariffs there for
| us just yet.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Yeah, this gets even worse within EU, I luckily am
| probably less affected by that than you (thanks to
| country size differences), but when it hits me, it surely
| is bad.
| Symbiote wrote:
| The EU was supposed to be working on improving this, to
| facilitate trade.
|
| It looks like they are hoping the market will improve by
| itself.
|
| https://single-market-
| economy.ec.europa.eu/sectors/postal-se...
| dep_b wrote:
| I remember paying 25 euro to ship a bottle of wine to
| somebody in Belgium while living 30 minutes away from the
| border (just for weight and destination, wine itself had
| no extra taxes).
|
| And then stuff from China appears at my doorstep almost
| for free?
|
| I would love to buy more from European sellers, but
| unless you're a serious company with deals shipping is
| just too expensive.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Our invisible borders are quite real when it comes to
| shipping. It's only the really big ones like Amazon which
| seem to be able to negotiate lower prices across the
| block, and that's just depressing.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Fast fashion is what consumers want. It's just that China
| has a state of the art supply chain that can do it and
| they blew everyone else out of the water.
| zhivota wrote:
| It's the same for us in the US honestly, the shipping
| companies are ridiculous with this. Someone in my company
| sent me a hoodie, in a soft package, cost on it said
| $14.50.
|
| Ridiculous! And they don't even discount you for bringing
| the package to their dropbox or to a store, it's the same
| price for home pickup. There's just no way to
| economically ship things as an individual.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I don't think the price of those small shipments from
| China is necessarily crazy.
|
| Looking at flights for people: you can get a return
| flight to China from the UK for less than PS350, which
| means less than PS175 one way.
|
| Let's say that's about 100kg (person plus luggage) then
| this means that flying 100g from China to the UK costs
| less than 17.5p or 20c in euros.
|
| I expect that cargo will be cheaper than passenger plane,
| so shipping small stuff from China to Europe can indeed
| be very cheap. It's about volume and efficiency.
| echoangle wrote:
| The plane itself isn't the only cost of shipping. Even
| sending a letter is more expensive, and there's no plane
| involved. You have to pick it up, bring it to the
| airport, and deliver it to the door from the destination
| airport.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Obviously. This is just to illustrate that what the "real
| cost" is is not as obvious as what some comments suggest
| and that it is likely much lower.
| owenversteeg wrote:
| Air freight rates vary wildly by demand/bulk
| discounts/route/etc but $2-8/kg is typical, with a median
| around $4/kg. Commercial flights are often cheaper, and
| especially when you consider the weight of
| seats/water/food/crew/etc.
| Nursie wrote:
| Yeah the outcomes here are insane -
|
| Here in Australia I can order a $10 (AUD) item from
| aliexpress and get free shipping from China. But as a
| consumer or small busines, if I want to send anything
| bigger than a letter within Australia it's likely to cost
| me way more than $10 just for the postage.
|
| It doesn't make sense and it must distort retail trade in
| China's favour. I'm honestly not surprised the US withdrew
| from that treaty, I think it needs reworking.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| So how are they able to deliver at such low rates and why
| can't other work it out and use that as well
| Nursie wrote:
| Because it's subsidised or effectively subsidised by
| treaty -
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union
|
| AFAICT it means that postal costs are only paid in the
| originating country, and receiving countries are still
| obliged to deliver.
| vachina wrote:
| If you're a consumer, I'm not sure why you're not singing
| praises of this arrangement. If someone in China can sell
| me exactly the same stuff for 1/4 the price you're
| charging, shipping included, then why do you even exist?
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >If you're a consumer, I'm not sure why you're not
| singing praises of this arrangement. If someone in China
| can sell me exactly the same stuff for 1/4 the price
| you're charging, shipping included,
|
| Because those low shipping prices are being subsidized by
| taxes and the rates other shippers pay which make their
| way back to him because he shares an economy with them.
|
| Just because the specific source of the subsidy is
| complex and can't be accounted for by the consumer
| doesn't mean it's not paid.
| throw310822 wrote:
| > I'm surprised the websites don't even acknowledge this yet.
|
| Well, why would you waste the opportunity to enrage Americans
| against their government, for free? "Your $5 package has
| arrived on time, now you only have to pay the $75 extra that
| the candidate you voted for has decided to take from you". It's
| the best ads campaign ever, and it's entirely free.
| Aurornis wrote:
| It's not that complicated.
|
| They don't pay the tariffs. The person receiving the package
| does. Many carriers will slap you with the tariff charge, a
| brokerage fee, and then send you to collections if you don't
| pay it.
|
| The vendors don't care because they're making the sale and
| the tariffs are the other person's responsibility. Caveat
| emptor.
| petersellers wrote:
| The person you are replying to isn't claiming that the
| seller pays the tariffs, they are saying that it's not in
| the seller's interest to notify buyers of the tariff charge
| because it's essentially free anti-tariff messaging once
| buyers are hit with the sudden fees.
| willvarfar wrote:
| but in the process all their customers will have been
| burned buying something from Temu and many will be wary
| of buying in the future even if the tariff situation
| improves etc?
| Symbiote wrote:
| That's certainly how it worked out in Europe, where the
| processing fee was much less (EUR5-10 usually).
|
| Since 2021 foreign merchants can send the goods tax paid,
| they collect the VAT and send it to to EU country, so
| there's no fees at customs. It works perfectly fine, but
| many people don't realize it or don't trust this.
| robryan wrote:
| This is the Australian system as well. A lot cheaper for
| the government to collect with the tradeoff that small no
| name Chinese sellers can pretty much ignore it without
| penalty.
| stavros wrote:
| Yep, this is my experience here in Greece. I'd randomly
| get maybe 5% of packages having a 3 EUR "customs fee" on
| top, but everything else was much cheaper. Now I have to
| pay VAT and import duties on everything, nothing gets
| extra fees but everything costs 50% more.
|
| I guess the intent was to let local shops compete with
| AE, and they succeeded, because the prices are much more
| in line with the local market, I just miss all the cheap
| stuff :P
| roshin wrote:
| > send you to collections if you don't pay it That doesn't
| make sense. So can I cause troubles to someone by ordering
| an unwanted $1 temu item to their house, and thereby summon
| a collection agency to them (if they don't pay the $75
| fee)?
| prmoustache wrote:
| they'll just refuse the item and thus the import fee.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| You ordered the package, so you have to pay the fees. If
| you gift the package to someone, that is nice of you but
| they do not become involved in your purchase by that.
| stavros wrote:
| The GP meant if I maliciously order a $1 in your name,
| specifically to cause you to pay.
| vincnetas wrote:
| wow i see a variation of SWAT'ing someone. Just flood
| your unliked neighbour with aliexpress packages. It costs
| you 0.5$ ant 75$ for him. real life DoS attack.
| macNchz wrote:
| Ordering pizzas cash-on-delivery to someone's house is
| already a fairly common form of online harassment
| (sometimes also a precursor to swatting).
| mrguyorama wrote:
| And because they aren't morons, Pizza places will
| generally deny an order of 20 pizzas, pay on delivery, to
| an address they don't have an existing relationship with.
|
| Cops haven't seemed to figure out that way of reducing
| abuse. Maybe if we pay them what we pay pizza delivery
| workers they will figure out how not to swat people.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Pizza places figured out not to do that because it's more
| profitable not to do that. Cops don't care because they
| still get to play with their toys and they generally have
| qualified immunity for civil violations that occur during
| the swatting.
| numpad0 wrote:
| The parent comment is joking that everyone should look for
| disgruntled Temu users and ask if they have few minutes to
| talk about laws and tariffs.
|
| No offense to guys talking about other topics on those
| occasions.
| robryan wrote:
| Kind of. People can always refuse to pay it and charge
| back. I'd imagine the US is about to have a massive amount
| of unclaimed parcels to deal with.
| rapind wrote:
| I doubt credit card purchases will be an option once we
| start seeing a lot of chargebacks. They are an absolute
| pita to deal with for the vendor and processor. I expect
| your payment options will be limited to those that don't
| allow chargebacks.
| _heimdall wrote:
| I assume we'll see backups on both sides. Containers
| backed up in Chinese ports and a huge backlog of
| unclaimed packages and delayed tariff bills waiting for
| USPS/UPS/FedEx to process them.
| crazygringo wrote:
| But the person receiving the package doesn't receive the
| package until they've paid the tariff.
|
| You don't have to pay it -- if you don't, the package gets
| returned to sender or destroyed.
|
| The post office delivers you a slip with information to go
| to your local post office to pay it and pick up the
| package. With UPS and FedEx you get a notice to pay online,
| and they deliver it once you do, as far as I know.
|
| I've never heard of something being delivered without the
| tariff already having been paid, and then it going to
| collections. Has anyone ever experienced that personally? I
| don't see how that would be legal, or why a delivery
| service would expose themselves to risk of nonpayment.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| This is literally false. My wife paid for a jacket from
| Ireland. Ireland jacket arrives. Weeks later, tariff shit
| comes in the mail.
| crazygringo wrote:
| That is not normal. Even a recent article explains:
|
| > US customers who placed orders on shopping websites
| like the popular Chinese fast-fashion platform Shein have
| been particularly impacted, even if they made their
| purchases long before the tariffs were announced. They
| are now forced to either pay hefty fees--in some cases,
| more than the value of the items inside -- _or have their
| packages sent back._
|
| > They show Love's order was put on hold for several
| hours, during which she received the notice asking her to
| pay the import duties. DHL also noted the package _would
| be returned in five days if she declined to do so._
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/tariffs-china-prices-fees-
| shein-...
|
| I can find a few anecdotes online about FedEx delivering
| first and then charging later. I can also find people
| saying they called FedEx and refused to pay, and FedEx
| waived the amount. I'm not a lawyer, but I don't see how
| FedEx can hold you responsible for payment when you
| didn't engage in business with them -- you didn't
| purchase anything from them and you didn't sign any
| contract with them. If they paid the tariff before
| delivering to you, then that's on them.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| > I don't see how FedEx can hold you responsible for
| payment when you didn't engage in business with them
|
| Literally the first thing I thought. You want to send me
| to collections? Fine. Now let the collection agency prove
| that I owe the debt.
| hiatus wrote:
| So if I wanted to mess with someone I can just send them
| tons of cheap crap from Temu and they'll be forced to pay
| tariffs for items they never asked for?
| zf00002 wrote:
| The only time I've received an item that had a fee, FedEx
| delivered it and then a week later I got a bill from
| Fedex in the mail.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > They don't pay the tariffs. The person receiving the
| package does.
|
| How does that work? I am assuming it's not US as I had
| never got any tariff charges or brokerage fees from the
| likes of FedEx or UPS.
| scott_w wrote:
| You get a letter from your delivery company (in the UK,
| usually the Post Office or Royal Mail) with a link to pay
| import taxes. Once you pay, the delivery is scheduled.
|
| Depending on country rules, it is sometimes possible for
| the sender to pay and then include the charges in their
| delivery fees.
| rdtsc wrote:
| Ah interesting. Sounds like a UK or EU thing. Thanks for
| explaining
| wqaatwt wrote:
| In the EU they do care (or rather the advertised price
| already included all fees, tariffs and VAT).
|
| I think they also send everything from EU warehouses
| because that loophole was closed years ago.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| That's not what happens. You see the price tag, you just
| don't buy it, is what happens.
| margalabargala wrote:
| That's not how tariffs work.
|
| You pay the sticker price, which does not include tariffs.
| The package ships. It arrives at the US border, and the
| carrier (DHL or whoever) bills you for the import tax
| before it leaves the port.
|
| Maybe this will change, but up until now when importing
| things, tariffs were not part of the price paid to the
| seller.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| I'm sorry for your convenience loss, but I'm happy for the
| environment.
|
| Not only because of the unrestricted consumerism, but also
| because of the environmental costs of logistics. I too have
| ordered fusible resistors from aliexpress that I could not find
| locally.
|
| But things I barely need, only for a small dopamine kick ? I do
| my best to not have a small baggie shipped from the other side
| of the planet for that.
|
| And not even mentioning the effects of insatiability on myself.
| misja111 wrote:
| Who would have thought that Trump would bring in a policy
| that would benefit the environment? Also, who would have
| guessed that right wing governments would start buying
| Tesla's? Quite a plot twist ..
| onemoresoop wrote:
| It's random dice throw. On average Trump has shot US in
| both feet unnecessarily.
| jampekka wrote:
| The resistors to your local store have to go through
| logistics as well. And doing the last mile yourself is a lot
| more inefficient than a post service doing it.
|
| Transport is also quite small fraction of most products'
| environmental costs.
| 1over137 wrote:
| >And doing the last mile yourself is a lot more inefficient
| than a post service doing it.
|
| How do you figure?
| walls wrote:
| One guy driving a route between 100 places is probably
| more efficient than 100 people all driving to and from a
| place.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| I'm in France, maybe I should open a proxy. You order through
| me, I reexpedite to the US, with a French stamp lol.
| dmurray wrote:
| Somebody absolutely should and will open this business.
| Versions of it already exist in Northern Ireland after
| Brexit.
|
| A slightly greyer version: you open the box, add a ribbon to
| every item, repackage it, mark it "final assembly in France".
|
| Unfortunately for you, your business probably gets
| outcompeted by the guy who has the same idea in Canada.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| That's already happening.
| ccozan wrote:
| It does not work. You have to declare the real source of the
| merchandise. Or it has to go through "substantial
| transformation" so that is called "Made in France".
|
| Country of origin is taxed and not country of shippment.
| brnt wrote:
| And nobody ever lied on those Chinese envelopes with the
| value declaration. ;)
|
| Also, I can tell you that the country of origin field has
| one of the lowest entry qualities of all fields. People
| just don't bother, and customs don't have the capacity.
| Also, depending on your warehousing, there is a good chance
| you simply don't know. If something in your item bucket
| came from either China, Vietnam, Malaysia or the
| Philippines, what are you gonna write?
| xeromal wrote:
| I bought an instrument cluster for my car for 700$ a year
| or two ago and they totally put something like "broken
| car parts - 20$" on the declaration.
| echoangle wrote:
| How does what you say not make it work though? Are you
| aware that people lie for financial gains?
| HotHotLava wrote:
| Sure, but then it's less of a fun side business and just
| becomes straight up smuggling.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| A reputable business might not be interested in
| smuggling, but if you have incentivized smuggling, it
| will definitely occur
| pjc50 wrote:
| 145% tariffs are practically designed to encourage
| smuggling.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I've seen a few headlines in our local news here in
| Australia about how nobody knows what amount of Chinese
| ingredients will result in the final product being hit with
| Chinese tariffs, even though the products are assembled
| here.
| kubb wrote:
| Russia has 0% tariffs, so they're probably going to ship
| through there.
| pixl97 wrote:
| China is 'best friends' with Russia, Russia is best friends
| with Trump. Huge piles of cash for everyone on the inside
| there.
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| Thank you for saving me money! I have been saving up for a
| little birthday gift for myself, which I was planning to get
| from Temu and the extra charge would make it way over my
| budget. Thanks again!
| prmoustache wrote:
| Why would you offer some low quality shit from Temu for a
| birthday? 99 items out of 100 self destruct within weeks of
| use.
|
| It is only useful to people compulsively buying clothing
| regardless of the quality and who will never wear twice the
| same thing. Disposable stuff/waste.
|
| One would only do that to their worst enemy.
|
| OK I am exagerrating a bit and had a handful lf decent stuff
| from aliexpress/wish/temu. But you can typically only order
| for yourself as the quality testing is non existent. It is
| totally unsuitable for gifts. Mechanical pieces are often out
| of tolerance, clothing way uglier inperson than in photo,
| electronic stuff can last only days or years but you have no
| way to know for sure, finitions in general are very bad in
| general.
| vultour wrote:
| Reading this thread is mind-boggling. People complaining
| that cheap garbage from Temu is falling apart. People
| proudly proclaiming that they order Chinese crap almost
| daily. An argument about whether one crap peddler is better
| than another one.
|
| Am I taking crazy pills? Am I the only one who buys things
| a few times per year? This rampant consumerism is
| depressing.
| d3nj4l wrote:
| It isn't all or nothing, products from
| Temu/Shein/AliExpress are not all "crap"; (and the idea
| that Chinese products are crap is also seriously
| outdated). Yes, there's a lot of shovelware on those
| websites, but if you know how to navigate them you can
| get the same products that you'd get from Amazon for a
| third of the price. I've bought bags, tools, hobby
| equipment etc from aliexpress that has lasted me years
| and saved literally 50% on average.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Comparing with Amazon is flawed as most of the stuff you
| find on Amazon is also pure junk/waste.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I keep hearing stuff like this and I kind of fully expect
| someone to tell me you have to pay Monster cable prices
| to get something that's not junk.
|
| Really my day to day experience isn't this at all. I have
| good amounts of "chinese junk" tools that I use on a
| weekly/monthly basis that I paid probably 25% of a name
| brand tool and they are holding up just fine. I'm not
| using them daily so don't need to spend my life savings
| on them. I do a bit of research first so not getting the
| worst crap that some people run into.
|
| Batteries are the big thing I've had excellent luck with.
| I can get Dewalt knockoff batteries at less than half the
| cost and twice the power and they last the same amount of
| time as my name brand.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I also got some decent stuff I bought from aliexpress but
| it is really a tiny fraction of what is offered.
| pixl97 wrote:
| So many people are clueless to this. So many products we
| buy in the US are the made in the same Chinese factory
| line and 200-400%+ marked up as a name brand.
|
| You have to do your research for sure.
|
| Honestly I'm old enough to remember when Japanese
| products were still considered crap after WWII. Then
| their stuff massively improved and trounced US products.
| Japanese cars lasting 100's of thousands of miles while
| US junk at the time barely lasted that. This reminds me
| of that at a much bigger scale.
| kergonath wrote:
| I don't buy things online too often (about once a month,
| I would say), but regularly I buy on AliExpress things
| that I cannot find elsewhere at a decent price or at all
| (mostly electronics and specialised hobbyist stuff). On
| the other hand, yes, Temi is cheap garbage, and so is
| much of AliExpress. And Amazon as well, to be honest.
| Real life leaves room for a lot of nuance.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Buy item X from Amazon, which is effectively a Temu
| product+ a 50% markup.
|
| Or buy direct from Temu/AliExpress and save money?
|
| It's not a hard choice.
|
| I like watches. While I still pay retail for most of my
| watches, the bands are like 2$ on AliExpress and 15$ on
| Amazon. Phone cases are much much cheaper.
|
| Certain phones aren't released domestically at all, so
| now I'm looking at a 100$ fee to import them. If I want
| to work on a project requiring a PCB that's now
| impossibly expensive.
| pixl97 wrote:
| There is also 'cheap' stuff from Temu that doesn't fall
| apart.
|
| There are plenty of white label products that are made in
| China and marked up 400+% in the US and sold under name
| brands.
|
| There are plenty of times a cheap tool is useful over an
| expensive one.
|
| Reality doesn't fall under your simple black and white
| classification.
| bavell wrote:
| I make maybe 5 Amazon purchases a year. There are a lot
| of shopping addicts out there! Gotta get your dopamine
| fix somehow I suppose.
| cgh wrote:
| Our neighbours have Prime vans as well as unmarked white
| delivery vans dropping stuff off almost daily, mostly
| small items. I have sometimes wondered where it all goes,
| until I see their overflowing garbage and recycling bins.
| rpcope1 wrote:
| No, I had the exact same thoughts. I personally find it
| crazy to think that you'd buy something (that isn't an
| explicit perishable or consumable) and intentionally buy
| something shoddy or discard it after only a few weeks.
|
| With regards to clothing, I'm kind of glad the market for
| cheap shit from sweatshops is getting a beating, as I'm
| tired of seeing fewer and fewer legitimately durable
| clothing items. We need more union shops like Carhartt's
| (which only makes a few things anymore) building nice
| durable clothing. God knows a good pure cotton duck
| jacket or pants are both better for the environment (no
| petroleum products for synthetic materials and longer
| life) and frankly a better investment when they last
| years or at least months under the hardest abuse.
| mogrim wrote:
| "exagerrating a bit" ? I've bought a few things off Temu
| and Shein, and the quality's been perfectly acceptable.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Very easy if your bar is already at rock bottom (amazon).
| drewzero1 wrote:
| I've also been saving up for a self birthday gift from
| AliExpress, parts to build a custom watch. Looks like I
| missed my chance on that one too. Though if this trade war
| continues escalating I have a feeling a watch will be the
| least of my worries.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > I'm surprised the websites don't even acknowledge this yet
|
| Some people are reporting seeing tiktoks - not "ads", but
| regular videos, inasmuch as there's a difference - where
| Chinese vendors are saying "see, this is the factory that makes
| US brands such as lululemon, why not cut out the middleman and
| buy direct?"
|
| > I guess they are hoping for a reversal in the next 2 weeks
|
| There's been several reversals already. If trade policy is done
| by whim, why not wait for a reversal as soon as it starts to
| bite?
|
| The whole category of "US business dependent on Chinese imports
| for inputs" is probably toast in the meantime. This includes a
| lot of kickstarters.
| pixl97 wrote:
| White label goods.
|
| My dad was in manufacturing and later importing so growing up
| I got to learn a lot about the process. He had worked for
| Heinz when I was young and would always buy the ketchup from
| some store brands that was about 60% of the cost. He was
| like, yea we bottle this on the same line as the name brand
| product.
|
| The same hold true for imports. And yea there is a lot of
| cheap Chinese junk, but if you know what you're looking for
| you can find the same Chinese products that get name branded
| and marked up 200-2000% here in the US.
|
| The problem with all of these is it's just going to cause and
| economic downturn where people purchase less, but more US
| products aren't going to sell. They simply aren't built here,
| and even if they are they'd still be many times more
| expensive. Even with the tariffs it would still be cheaper
| from China.
| Havoc wrote:
| Much like brexit this will be a case of hindsight for many -
| people realising too late that they voted against their own
| interests
| cbeach wrote:
| Brexit literally just resulted in the UK having lower tariffs
| and a probable free trade deal with the largest economy on
| the planet.
|
| ...unlike our friends on the European continent.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Brexit has been a disaster for the UK otherwise and anyone
| with eyes can see that
| automatic6131 wrote:
| A "disaster" is a overstatement to the point of falsity.
| Still an unforced error and a bad idea but let's not
| exaggerate.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Why do you think it's an exaggeration? I mean it has
| measurably put them in a worse financial spot than
| before. I'd call the US tariffs a disaster and I'm not
| sure which one wiped out more from which nation's economy
| jplrssn wrote:
| The UK-EU trade volume is three times larger than that
| between UK-US.
| sofixa wrote:
| > probable free trade deal
|
| While hoping is free, the negative impact of Brexit has
| been extensively documented. Hell, there's even a Wikipedia
| page about it:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_Brexit
| kergonath wrote:
| > Brexit literally just resulted in the UK having lower
| tariffs
|
| That is, of course, entirely false. In that the UK does
| not, in fact, have lower tariffs, and even if that would be
| the case, there are many downsides that don't have anything
| to do with tariffs.
|
| > and a probable free trade deal with the largest economy
| on the planet
|
| The FTA with the US has been "happening soon" for about a
| decade now. I'll believe it when I see it. And with a
| protectionist American government, it would put the UK at a
| significant disadvantage.
|
| > unlike our friends on the European continent
|
| LOL. Nobody on the continent wants its country in the same
| position as the UK is. Brexit killed any political movement
| to leave the EU for a generation.
| cbeach wrote:
| > In that the UK does not, in fact, have lower tariffs
|
| When tariffs were applied, UK got 10%, EU got 20%.
| There's currently a temporary reprieve on the EU.
|
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/04/02/trump-
| tariff...
| scott_w wrote:
| So a couple of things:
|
| 1. The EU has that reprieve. Given the EU _can_ bite
| back, it 's possible that reprieve becomes permanent.
|
| 2. Last time Trump slapped tariffs on UK + EU, Biden
| prioritised reversing tariffs on the EU first because
| they're a bigger trading partner than the UK.
|
| As the above poster pointed out, that's to say nothing of
| the many downsides of not being in the EU.
| kergonath wrote:
| They were not applied. Tomorrow, they can be 30% or
| 5.36%. If your only goal was depending on a fluke and a
| brain fart of a senile old man 10 years after Brexit was
| voted, then I don't need to tell you how poorly thought
| out it was. If that is your measure of success, then
| Russia and Belarus welcome you.
| flawn wrote:
| That's definitely not what Brexit was and is about. Go ask
| a fellow british about that.
| Havoc wrote:
| I guess brexit insanity and trump insanity cancel each
| other out then
| overfeed wrote:
| > probable free trade deal with the largest economy on the
| planet.
|
| Get ready for the chlorine chicken!
| anal_reactor wrote:
| What a great day to be European.
|
| I think that websites like Temu or AliExpress are particularly
| popular in poorer countries because we're used to scammy
| tactics, and we know how to navigate them. We know what to buy
| in order to get what we want, and for this purpose, AliExpress
| is awesome, because there are so many products you can't find
| locally. Meanwhile customers from rich countries expect better
| customer service as the default, and are willing to pay higher
| price for it.
| brettermeier wrote:
| According to this report
| (https://www.earnestanalytics.com/insights/temu-growing-
| faste...), Temu is growing fastest among high income earners.
| Would be interesting from which countries most customers come
| from.
| simgt wrote:
| > I loved temu, aliexpress, and shein. I probably averaged 1
| item per day arriving to my house, for years and years.
|
| > I feel bad for the unaware people still ordering.
|
| I personally feel bad for the environment and all the people on
| the losing side of cheap low quality junk production. Good if
| the beneficiaries are gone from your part of the world.
| arghwhat wrote:
| > I personally feel bad for the environment
|
| 1 item per day is certainly not efficient, but nowadays temu
| and aliexpress batch things over a small period so that
| shouldn't really happen...
|
| > and all the people on the losing side of cheap low quality
| junk production
|
| Remember that _taking away_ bad jobs does not save anyone,
| quite the contrary. People go from having shit jobs to no
| jobs, or even worse jobs with lower-profile companies.
|
| Helping them requires creating vast numbers of better paying
| jobs with better working condition in their country, which
| require redirecting vast amounts of money to those countries.
| E.g., by buying even more stuff from those regions, but from
| manufacturers paying better wages (and selling goods more
| expensively), so they end up having to massively expand and
| hire more.
| dingnuts wrote:
| > Helping them requires creating vast numbers of better
| paying jobs with better working condition in their country,
| which require redirecting vast amounts of money to those
| countries
|
| This was the logic under Deng, and the reason China is now
| a peer state. Unfortunately when doing business with
| communists, enriching them doesn't help the individuals
| move out of poverty because that would require wages to
| rise and that happens for political reasons not merit in a
| single party system
|
| If we enrich the CCP we just end up with an adversary
| capable of taking us on. That's why tariffs.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| "If we enrich the CCP we just end up with an adversary
| capable of taking us on. That's why tariffs."
|
| This argument is absolutely accurate and somewhere
| between two and six decades late depending on who you
| feel like blaming for offshoring. Present day all we're
| doing is poking inflation with a stick, threatening the
| bond market (and eventually the dollar reserve), and
| encouraging economic partners to look elsewhere for
| stability. 3 guesses how all that ends.
| XenophileJKO wrote:
| The thing that really annoys me is tariffs could have
| been used SO much more intelligently. For example a 24
| month increasing schedule. That gives business the kind
| of incentive to affect manufacturing and something they
| can plan against.
|
| But now we have a dumpster fire and tariffs will have an
| even worse reputation.
| arghwhat wrote:
| It might have been better reputation-wise than the
| current game of chicken, but tariffs will always sour
| economic partnerships, which in turn leads to bolstering
| alternative economic partnerships...
| XenophileJKO wrote:
| This is objectively untrue, tariffs exist all around the
| world and countries are still trading.
| arghwhat wrote:
| That tariffs are in use is not proof that it is untrue.
| Even with the current dumpster fire we still trade with
| the US, but that obviously does not mean there has been
| no harm.
|
| For countries, tariffs is not something that is just
| shrugged off as it impacts their economy, there will
| always be political countermeasures to strongly
| discourage that tariffs are applied that harms them.
| Retaliatory tariffs, impact on other negotiations and
| relationships, etc.
|
| For companies, tariffs harm profits and fair competition
| on both supply chain and consumer side, depending on
| where the tariffs are located. The company would
| strategize for maximum profit margins, circumventing
| tariffs, remove countries from their supply chain, and
| focusing on more profitable markets.
|
| It wouldn't be a boycott the same way it is now of
| course. It would be a slower process. But tariffs is a
| way to force the market and always have wide negative
| effects. One just hopes that certain long-term side-
| effects (like high import cost causing focus on driving
| down local supply cost) is worth the impact (local cost
| of living increase, drop in investments, drop in friendly
| reputation).
| saalweachter wrote:
| The tricky part is the goal is another tax cut.
|
| Right now, after all of the other tax cuts, our budget
| deficit is slightly larger than the US discretionary
| budget.
|
| Which means that, even if DOGE cut everything, there's
| still no way to close the deficit without raising taxes.
|
| Enter the tariffs.
| gruez wrote:
| >Unfortunately when doing business with communists,
| enriching them doesn't help the individuals move out of
| poverty because that would require wages to rise and that
| happens for political reasons not merit in a single party
| system
|
| But poverty has dropped and income has risen under the
| CCP? You can argue that the CCP doesn't actually care
| about "individuals moving out of poverty", and all they
| care about is staying in power, but this is the sort of
| accusation that could be levied against governments in
| the west as well.
| chairmansteve wrote:
| Why tariffs on Madagascar?
| WorldPeas wrote:
| Maybe he's not a fan of vanilla ice cream
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I am bugged more by local environmental impacts.
|
| Around the time that manufacturing started moving to China
| _en masse_ in the 1990s I started to hear about
| trichloroethylene contamination at manufacturing sites in
| the U.S. Look up "trichloroethylene united states" in
| Google and you'll probably get results about how our
| marines were exposed at Camp Jejune and are now eligible
| for V.A. benefits. A search for "trichloroethylene china"
| might turn up a picture of a truck full of barrels from a
| company that wants to send you those barrels.
| hangonhn wrote:
| That stuff is all over Silicon Valley. Santa Clara County
| actually has one of the most if not the most EPA
| superfund sites. It's the leftover legacy of chip
| manufacturing. When you rent in the Bay Area, the
| landlord does not have to disclose TCE contamination to
| you. TCE can cause birth defects and low birth weight in
| weeks if breathed in by pregnant women. If you're renting
| in the Bay Area, Google the address and make sure the
| property is not over a TCE contamination area.
| watwut wrote:
| Those people are not helped by loosing customers and there is
| no plan to help them.
|
| They would be helped by better job opportunities where they
| live, by more governmental protections for workers where they
| live etc.
|
| But, someone buying stuff made by their employer is not what
| harms them.
| flappyeagle wrote:
| *losing
| simgt wrote:
| > But, someone buying stuff made by their employer is not
| what harms them.
|
| It is exactly what harms them.
|
| With that logic one can defend keeping children in tantalum
| mines in the supply chain of an iPhone. That's not an
| acceptable status quo...
|
| Removing the market for immoral exploitation of beings and
| the environment is a necessary step. The size of the market
| for things made fairly needs to grow.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| There are kids in Congo that are claiming to be older
| than they are so they can get work in mines to feed
| themselves and their families. If they don't work they
| and their families starve, but if they do work they are
| encouraging immoral child labor. I don't understand why
| many people think the answer is easy and straightforward
| in that case, this sounds like the trolley problem to me.
| simgt wrote:
| The people involved in international aid in particular
| know fine well that it's not an easy problem to solve...
| Exploitation and corruption is at every level here. For a
| children in Congo it may be a better option if the only
| alternative is to starve, but let's not pretend that
| everyone from the mine owner to the smartphone buyer is
| not profiting from that situation.
|
| As a consumer one of the few immediate means of action we
| have is to at least refuse these products when we can...
| Then yeah, vote, donate, get involved for these kids to
| live decently.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Let's say we boycott the Congo because they allow child
| labor (or turn a blind eye to it), and they see our "fix"
| (disallow it, let them starve) as barbaric because they
| have nowhere near enough resources to just make the
| starving problem go away (or to consider that as a
| possible solution). Did we make progress on anything by
| cutting the Congo off economically? We already know that
| if the country became richer the problem would probably
| go away naturally, but making it poorer instead, why?
|
| I kind of understand why China invests in Africa the way
| it does vs how the west seems to just throw charity and
| morality at it. Development would solve the problem
| naturally (a richer society will stop sending their kids
| to the mines, or having their schools organize them to
| make fireworks, a sad state of affairs that happened less
| than two decades ago in China but now is unthinkable).
| wickedsight wrote:
| I fully agree on the environmental part. Shipping all this
| stuff individually is incredibly wasteful. Even the combined
| packages from AliExpress someone else mentioned this is the
| case, since there's a ton of unnecessary packaging wasting
| space and resources.
|
| On the 'losing side' part I agree a lot less. In the recent
| past, most of these items would be sold by mega corps, marked
| up multiple times with most of the profits flowing into
| shareholder's pockets. Meanwhile, the average consumer is
| over paying for the exact same 'low quality junk' with
| branding like Logitech, Dell or Amazon Basics on it. Now we
| can get the same (or often better) quality straight from the
| source, often for a fraction of the price. To me, that's a
| big win.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| I don't think it's the packaging -- I'd you're buying one
| thing a day a ton of it is just going to pure waste,
| eventually to the landfill.
| properpopper wrote:
| Environment protection in the EU
|
| good:
|
| - replace plastic straws/cups with paper based ones
|
| questionable:
|
| - limit nicotine products to 10ml, so now instead of buying
| one bottle (200ml for example) of nicotine you have to buy 20
| bottles 10ml each - ???
| tempaccount420 wrote:
| > good:
|
| > - replace plastic straws/cups with paper based ones
|
| This belongs at least in "questionable" if not just "bad"
| kortex wrote:
| The nicotine bottle size constraint is a safety concern.
| Spilling a 200ml bottle of nicotine easily has the
| potential to cause lethality or morbidity through skin
| absorption, particularly in children. A 10ml bottle can
| still cause injury, but it is way more likely to be
| survivable.
|
| In this case, the safety concerns outweigh the
| environmental concerns.
| kbelder wrote:
| I'm so out of the vice loop. What nicotine products do you
| buy in a bottle?
| jacobgkau wrote:
| I don't use them, but I'd assume vape juice.
| 34679 wrote:
| I've been short on work, which means I've been poor. I use my
| off time to work on side projects that I simply could not
| afford to complete if I paid what US companies charge for
| tools, components, and custom PCBs. My ability to innovate is
| seriously impacted by these tarrifs and there is no
| alternative that I can afford.
|
| I recently created something that people in my industry
| actually want to buy, but I only ordered enough parts for 5
| units. I had priced them so that when I sold them, I'd be
| able to put larger orders in to begin getting quantity
| discounts. Only problem is, what was going to be a $2k order
| will now cost roughly $5k, and guess what? I didn't charge
| $1k apiece. Now I'm out of stock and stuck in limbo waiting
| to earn cash from my regular job and see how these tarrifs
| shake out.
| simgt wrote:
| To clarify, I'm not defending the tariffs or the way this
| whole thing is implemented. I'm sure it puts a lot of
| people in trouble.
|
| I'm only criticizing the race to the bottom that the
| platforms and kind of consumption mentioned are part of.
| Sure at the individual level we can find advantages to it,
| but I'm arguing that we're collectively worst off.
| overfeed wrote:
| > I'm only criticizing the race to the bottom that the
| platforms and kind of consumption mentioned are part of.
|
| You're going to (collectively) need to increase the
| incomes at the low-end if you want people earning
| minimum-wage to still be clothed and able to furnish
| their homes. A significant portion of people who by from
| Shein have no other options within their budgets, and
| their existence tends to be ignored in conversations such
| as this one. The unspoken social contract has been "You
| get low wages, but get access to cheap consumer goods",
| but now the cheap consumer goods are being taken away.
|
| There's a dissonance between wanting American-
| made/substantive/good quality/expensive consumer goods
| and maintaining the minimum wage at unlivable levels to
| avoid knock-on inflation. You can't have the economics of
| Switzerland coexisting with McJobs.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yeah pretty funny to see mostly the same people calling for
| a $20+/hr "minimum wage" on one hand, and bemoaning the
| tarrifs on the other hand. They will tell you that if you
| can't pay your employees that much, then you don't have a
| viable business. But they will turn around and whine about
| how their cheap Chinese crap purchases are now going to
| cost what a "viable" domestic producer would have to
| charge.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| It's easy to look at _the internet at large_ see people
| with these contradictory takes. But 1) these groups may
| consist of entirely different people who are vocal about
| different topics, or 2) the wide brush obscures critical
| context.
|
| I support a $20 minimum wage AND
|
| I think tariffs can be justified, especially when we use
| free trade to ignore the external costs to the
| environment and the arbitrage of exploitative labor AND
|
| I have a problem with implementing tariffs in such a
| shotgun, ill-considered, shoddy way lacking clear
| strategy or intent
| alabastervlog wrote:
| I'm a lefty lib and, like lots of us, I've wanted
| restricted trade with China _since we granted them MFN
| status_ in the '90s. I think that was a bad idea in the
| first place.
|
| Neoliberalism _is not popular_ and never was. Donors like
| it. Workers don 't. The only reason either party could
| stick to it and still win elections, is because both
| stuck to it. Neither "defected".
|
| Tariffing Canada and Mexico? The EU? Yeah, not so much.
| And it makes working against Chinese trade far less
| effective and more-costly.
|
| Claiming these aren't a tax on Americans? That's just a
| lie. Chaotically switching your message and actual
| policies day to day? That's _not_ how you foster
| investment in factories that 'll take years to be net-
| profitable. Working against the CHIPS act? What the
| _literal fuck_ , that's exactly the kind of thing you
| [edit: the "you" here is the administration and their
| boosters, not necessarily "you", the poster] claim to
| want! That was a _really_ good idea!
|
| So, I agree with a _tiny_ amount of the overall policy,
| while finding its implementation incompetent, and the
| other parts to work so strongly against the effects of
| the part-I-like that I find desirable, that I doubt my
| motivations for wanting to reduce trade with developing
| authoritarian states and the administration 's are even
| the same.
| nickff wrote:
| If you want to restrict imports from China, it is
| somewhat necessary to restrict trade from Western
| countries as well, in order to prevent evasion by trans-
| shipping (until and unless they restrict Chinese imports
| as well).
|
| Canada has been laundering Chinese aluminum and steel,
| Malaysia has been laundering Chinese 'honey', etc.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| There were _way_ cheaper and more-effective ways to
| achieve that. And that 's not why the administration says
| they're doing this, anyway. It's because we have trade
| deficits, period. Or it's because of fentanyl, since that
| was the justification for the invocation of emergency
| powers that're letting the executive impose tariffs at
| all.
| const_cast wrote:
| Most people bemoaning the tariffs are doing so because
| they understand that production will not actually come
| back to the US. It's not that these people hate Americans
| and don't want domestic manufacturing (or to pay for it),
| it's that they can see the reality that this isn't what's
| actually going to happen. Instead, the price of goods
| will just rise.
|
| A lot of these people too have been saying "buy local!"
| or "support black businesses!" for a while now. They're
| not the same people bemoaning the lost of hyper
| consumerist plastic junk.
| int_19h wrote:
| I'm pretty far to the left, and I'm actually fine with
| tariffs on China in principle for exactly the reason that
| you mention. Tangentially, I don't think that "free
| trade" can ever be meaningfully free when goods flow
| freely but workers can't move to where the high-paying
| jobs are - it's a recipe to create market inefficiencies
| that companies can profit from.
|
| However, the fact of the matter is that our economy as it
| exists right now relies on cheap goods from China. This
| can and should be changed, but a meaningful plan to do so
| would last years of careful incremental changes if the
| goal is to benefit Americans as a whole. This is
| emphatically not what this admin is doing.
| existencebox wrote:
| This is a bit orthogonal to the broader conversation, but
| you've hooked me with your predicament: Can you allow for
| preorders or "Expressed interest" at a new price point? (or
| at a hand-wavy price point to assess interest re:
| overhead/bulk/etc.) If tariffs come down, you can
| refund/credit, but for customers who wanted this,
| something-at-some-price may be better than nothing-at-any-
| price.
| 1over137 wrote:
| >Anyone getting a package in May will be hit with a $75-$150 or
| more bill per package
|
| Not "anyone"; only the 4% of humanity that lives in the USA.
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| ~20% of AliExpress and Temu packages is probably the more
| pertinent number.
| conductr wrote:
| > Buying from Amazon or locally would have cost me 10x as much.
|
| Most things I have bought on Ali express have no US source. I
| also have mostly bought small electronics and components and
| generally pay the Amazon premium for speed and only go to Ali
| express when I can't find what I need, so third is quite a
| bummer to hear as I'd simply have no source for that item.
| Although, it did seem too good to be true, the minimal shipping
| costs that is.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I bought a bunch of off-brand Lego kits usually with Chinese
| themes (pagodas, nine-tailed foxes) from Temu. What I thought
| was hilarious about Temu was that the size of things was
| usually different from you had in mind. Most of the time Temu
| items were smaller than I imagined but once in a while you'd
| get something much bigger.
| chrisBob wrote:
| One positive that could still come out of the tariffs is the US
| consuming less junk.
|
| I just spent a few months in Germany, and the trash can for our
| APARTMENT BUILDING is roughly half of the size of the one at my
| single family home in the US. And here I see lots of my
| neighbors overflowing their 96 gallon wheeled tote very week.
| The world would be much better off with out all of this waste.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Germany is definitely top-tier on reducing waste. Before I
| left the UK it had got to the point where actual landfill-
| bound unrecyclable trash was a tiny portion of the waste
| output.
|
| The sad thing is, UK and Germany are tiny compared to all the
| other countries that don't give a shit.
| imzadi wrote:
| I live in Germany. One reason the toters can be smaller is
| because there places to dispose of your recyclable goods
| (free) on almost every corner. The toters are just for
| compost and regular trash.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| As long as they arrive before may 2nd.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| After the inavsion of Ukraine and sanctions were put on Russia
| every western company laundered their goods through Kazakhstan
| and into Russia. Im sure we will see a similar situation whith
| chinese goods finding their way into the country via vietnam.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| I used to buy a lot from Temu. Till I got a product that fell
| apart after three months. I tried to leave a bad review, but Temu
| wouldn't allow it. If you're trying to leave 3 star rating or
| below, they redirect you to customer service. But since customer
| service only dealt with items under 45 days (as far as I
| remember), they would just tell me something like "too bad,
| you're out of luck".
|
| So I can't get a refund, I can't get a replacement, I can't leave
| bad review.
|
| This was very eye-opening to me. I immediately uninstalled their
| stupid app.
| mattigames wrote:
| The closest thing to Amazon made in Latin America is almost the
| same thing, I'm talking of course about Mercadolibre.com, you
| can ask a refund for a product but if you do you cannot leave a
| review at all, and the products with bad scores have their
| scores and their reviews hidden, that's why is impossible to
| find a single product with less than 4 stars, and they have
| millions of them, it's as shady as it gets.
| wredcoll wrote:
| Whats the goal here? Like, with amazon they don't own most of
| the products they sell, so presumably leaving a bad review
| doesn't bother _amazon_ much, but what about temu?
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Temu is about offering a convenient hyper fast shopping
| channel to Chinese manufacturers with customers worldwide,
| primarily for clothing. A product which sells for
| months/years and gathers reviews is not part of their
| vision. Their customers don't need reviews (sales numbers
| is everything), but the users expect them, so they are
| there.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| Aliexpress has the same problem, quite frustrating.
| mixermachine wrote:
| I can find some bad reviews on items that have a lot of
| positive reviews on Aliexpress. Seems like they don't
| completely filter all of them.
| MIC132 wrote:
| But they do have a time limit on leaving a review, as far
| as I can tell.
| dns_snek wrote:
| They have a 30 day time frame to leave a review. That's
| why so many reviews just say "Everything arrived on time"
| and none of them say "this thing broke after 31 days".
| bkor wrote:
| AliExpress highly encourages leaving a review. They also
| encourage taking pictures. As a result, loads of random
| pictures in reviews.
|
| You can do an additional remarks later, but I often don't
| bother. It's drowned out anyway.
|
| What I often do is read the reviews. What's usually done
| is a critical review and still 5 stars. The fake reviews
| are pretty easily spotted. It shouldn't be this way, but
| in my experience it's still better than Amazon. With
| Amazon more effort is made to fake a review.
| jampekka wrote:
| If you read the aliexpress reviews, there are a lot of
| 5-stars totally bashing the product.
| oliwarner wrote:
| Do you buy anything based on reviews there? They're obviously
| silly and exchanged for discounts and "coins" so I just
| ignore them in a way I don't elsewhere.
|
| I quite like AE because you can avoid the app and returns on
| DOAs often just involve a refund without returning anything.
| There _are_ silly annoyances, and sometimes buying locally is
| inexplicably cheaper, but for little electronics, they 're
| hard to beat.
| stavros wrote:
| No, I treat AE reviews as written by the manufacturer.
| Sometimes I'll look to see if a legitimate user has posted
| something wrong with the product, or a caveat, but I never
| pay attention to the rating.
|
| I've had almost solely good experiences with AE, but it
| does take experience to shop there (never trust the photos,
| if the price is too cheap it's a scam, batteries are always
| fake, etc).
| oliwarner wrote:
| > it does take experience to shop there
|
| Amen, and resilience. It's a combative UX, trying to
| force you into bundles instead of single purchases,
| Choice items rather than cheaper with regular p&p, not
| advertising that some things (eg bare lithium cells) will
| be shipped seemingly by sailors chucking corked glass
| bottles into the sea and hoping they get to you within
| three business years.
|
| I've not had too much of a problem with outright scams.
| Some things have been smaller than expected (photo issues
| - description accurate) and if it's delicate (eg plywood
| robot models, larger foam planes) they will find a way to
| grind it into dust before delivery. Both those examples
| got a refund the next day.
|
| But it's cheap when it works but the central company
| appears to be honest and helpful when you contact them.
| stavros wrote:
| I did have one or two items being scams, eg a mosquito
| bite pen that ended up being empty inside, or a 2TB USB
| disk that actually just had a trashy MicroSD card inside,
| but both cost $3 so I knew they were scams when I got
| them (I was just curious).
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| I had bad reviews been supressed by amazon several as well, so
| at this point I'm assuming any review system is theater.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Amazon definitely don't do anything like this.
| adrianmsmith wrote:
| I've only ever left one bad review on Amazon. Chopsticks,
| they came bound together with some sticky tape. Sticky tape
| left a very sticky area just where your hands go that I was
| unable to get off despite a lot of effort scrubbing,
| washing, and so on. I left a polite constructive review
| saying they were good chopsticks but watch out for this
| stickiness issue. My review was declined by Amazon on the
| grounds it didn't meet their "community guidelines"
| (without elaborating further on which rule I'd supposedly
| broken).
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| They must have thought it was a bad dad joke.
| onli wrote:
| Amazon is known for suppressing negative reviews, there
| are many reports about it. Not sure why the grandparent
| comment is claiming the contrary - not doing the
| automatic redirect maybe, but they do remove or just not
| accept negative reviews.
| nottorp wrote:
| You don't have a glue removal spray? :)
|
| I bought one to get sticker residue off my windshield,
| but it's proven useful many times since.
|
| Mind, considering how well it removes glue, I wouldn't
| stick anything that was touched by it in my mouth... but
| may be okay for the hand end of your chopsticks.
| randunel wrote:
| Can you recommend your glue removal spray which is food
| safe? Because the entirety of cutlery needs to remain
| food safe, not just the pointy end.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| My mother swears by "Goo Gone": https://googone.com/
|
| Of course, after you use it, I would recommend to wash
| the cutlery.
| cess11 wrote:
| Here are the ingredients: Product Name:
| Goo and Adhesive Remover Spray Gel Product Code:
| 2096, 2137C Ingredients CAS No. Function
| Petroleum distillates 64742-47-8 Solvent Aliphatic
| ether alcohol Withheld Solvent d-Limonene
| 5989-27-5 Solvent Polymer Withheld Thickener
| Orange sweet extract 8028-48-6 Solvent Solvent
| orange 60 6925-69-5 Colorant Solvent red 18
| 6483-64-3 Colorant
|
| I would probably use some lens cleaning ether without
| perfume.
| dns_snek wrote:
| Just wash the cutlery afterwards? Dish soap isn't food
| safe either for that matter.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| I recommend isopropyl alcohol. It's cheap, versatile and
| works like a charm for most of your cleaning jobs. Way
| safer and cheaper than sprays and "super-do-that-
| thing-4000". No offense to the sprayers.
| nottorp wrote:
| Not for Austrian road tax stickers. That's specifically
| what made me get the spray.
| kupfer wrote:
| Orange oil works wonders. It's explicitly not food safe,
| but you get that stuff on your hand every time you peel
| an orange and it's also present in juice. Just rinse them
| afterwards and wear gloves.
| masfuerte wrote:
| Paste made from sodium bicarbonate and vegetable oil is
| good at getting sticky label residue off glass jars.
| gblargg wrote:
| The community guidelines rejection is such BS. I've done
| thousands of Amazon reviews and get about 1% rejection
| rate, and it's always baffling as to the cause. You
| develop superstition over time over what is the cause. I
| avoid certain words (sexual, violence, mention of other
| brands), blur our barcodes, etc. "Sticky" would trigger
| my "uh oh, sounds sexual" alarm and I'd word it something
| like "tape around chopsticks left adhesive residue". Like
| I said, superstition.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Ok, well I've left nine 1-star and many other 2 or more
| star reviews and _none_ of them have been removed for any
| reason, so I would say you got unlucky and that I stand
| by my comment that Amazon don 't do anything like
| _automatically redirecting all 1-star reviews to customer
| service_.
| DecentShoes wrote:
| They absolutely do, it's personally happened to me. My
| review was rejected because I simply listed what items were
| included in the box, one of them being a card that offered
| a bribe for a positive review.
| close04 wrote:
| _Every_ review I left for Amazon products (Amazon EU) got
| rejected until it was diluted into nothing. The explanation
| was always vague, listing a dozen possible reasons, none of
| which fit what I wrote.
|
| On non-Amazon products it's a coin toss for negative
| reviews. Many are published, some are not. Can't explain
| why.
|
| Google is not better, negative reviews I leave on Maps are
| published very selectively. Maybe big-tech found a way to
| monetize this too. I know sites like Yelp are more or less
| an extortion business where you pay to get negative reviews
| wiped.
| LegitShady wrote:
| I bought a pcie wifi card on amazon.
|
| It came with a "get $20 if you leave a 5 star review" card
| in it.
|
| I took a picture and included it in my review.
|
| Amazon declined to publish it.
|
| So, they do shady shit like this for sure.
| shakna wrote:
| Seller-side here. Amazon combine my author page, with that
| of A.A. Milne. Some of my products show up under the
| deceased author, some of his under mine. Reviews for one
| particular product are combined.
|
| My seller ID is separate, my last name is also Milne, but
| my first is James.
|
| He wrote a book called "The Red House Mystery", I wrote an
| homage to it because I am related to the man, called "Red
| House". Different products, with different ISBNs.
|
| Combined reviews. [0]
|
| That's not exactly a fair process for customers - and no, I
| can't get them uncombined. I've been trying for years. But
| if the seller can't get rid of something completely
| misleading, that seems to have been caused by a very badly
| automated process, then there are processes at Amazon that
| cause problems.
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.com.au/Red-House-James-Milne-
| ebook/dp/B0C...
| marcusb wrote:
| I've never (to my knowledge) had a review on Amazon
| rejected, and I've left very some negative reviews,
| including when I received counterfeit items.
|
| I always thought the review scams on Amazon were more
| driven by the third-party sellers doing stuff like listing
| takeover, astroturfing reviews, bribing customers for good
| reviews, etc., but maybe I'm wrong. I have personally
| received multiple offers from third-party sellers of
| incentives to leave good reviews.
| guappa wrote:
| Either you've never used amazon or you are lying in bad
| faith.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| Neither does Temu. They're misrepresenting what Temu does,
| at least in my experience.
|
| If you choose a star rating below _five_ , Temu asks if
| you'd like to request a refund or seek other assistance.
| The one time I said yes -- it was a keyboard where a shift
| key wouldn't trigger consistently at the peculiar angle
| that my typing style hit it at -- it immediately gave me a
| 100% refund and said just keep it.
|
| But I've left other low-star rating without trouble. The
| refund/assistance suggestion is an entirely optional
| sidetrack.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| I have written more than 200 reviews on Amazon in the past
| year and only one got rejected, and quickly approved I
| corrected one thing that was out of the rules.
|
| More than 50% of those are below 3 stars. They don't suppress
| any legitimate reviews.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Amazon took down one of my reviews because I included a
| picture of the item's manual which had a page offering to
| pay for Amazon reviews (the item had unanimous 5 star
| reviews). To me that seemed like valuable info and
| legitimate context to include in a review but even after I
| appealed they disagreed because my picture was
| "irrelevant".
| gblargg wrote:
| You're supposed to report review manipulation offers to
| Amazon. Reviews are for the product itself, not the
| seller (in theory multiple sellers can offer the same
| product, but for alphabet soup brands that's never the
| case).
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| The review manipulation offer was boxed up in the
| shrinkwrapped package so from my POV that made it part of
| the product. If the seller is altering the product then
| IMO its fair game to review. If a seller removed the
| batteries or put a sticker on the product I'd consider
| that an alteration to be part of the product itself... as
| opposed to when reviews complain about stuff like the
| seller's shipping speed which is orthogonal to what's in
| the box being shipped.
| lozenge wrote:
| How convenient that the information only goes to Amazon,
| who can choose to do nothing, and isn't allowed to go out
| to other customers to help them make a purchasing
| decision.
| yread wrote:
| > I have written more than 200 reviews on Amazon
|
| Why did you do that? Did they pay you? Or did you get the
| stuff for free?
| baq wrote:
| You forgot to ask 'Do you live in a high-trust society?'
| - or maybe you didn't?
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| Yeah I get the items for free in exchange of honest
| reviews, look up Amazon Vine, it's an official Amazon
| program.
|
| Note that if anything they are more stringent with the
| quality of the reviews we need to write, not less.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| >More than 50% of those are below 3 stars.
|
| Do you make bad purchasing decisions? How could "over 50%"
| of 200+ purchases be two star or fewer? Why would you still
| patronize Amazon if this is your experience?
|
| >They don't suppress any legitimate reviews.
|
| While I don't think they do -- Amazon, like Temu, is a
| marketplace of sellers, and they let the bad sellers die --
| you aren't really in a position to say if they do or not.
| Amazon's algorithm for surfacing and/or aggregating reviews
| is not something we can audit in any real manner.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Some people treat it like an adventure or a gamble or are
| just too curious, they know it's hit or miss but it's
| cheap and usually you can return it easily. See Atomic
| Shrimp channel for example. I don't get those people but
| I don't judge
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > Do you make bad purchasing decisions? How could "over
| 50%" of 200+ purchases be two star or fewer? Why would
| you still patronize Amazon if this is your experience?
|
| I get them for free, see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43690563
|
| > While I don't think they do -- Amazon, like Temu, is a
| marketplace of sellers, and they let the bad sellers die
| -- you aren't really in a position to say if they do or
| not. Amazon's algorithm for surfacing and/or aggregating
| reviews is not something we can audit in any real manner.
|
| Most of my reviews are for items with very little reviews
| due to the nature of Vine, so I can directly see the
| impact of my score on the average score.
| vitorgrs wrote:
| In Brazil there's Shopee, which honestly, I find way better
| than Temu...
| esperent wrote:
| Shopee has even worse behavior around reviews. You can't even
| leave a review past the first few days, and they bribe you
| with shopee points to leave a review.
|
| The result is people opening the box, going yep, it works, 5
| stars, gimme those points.
|
| If it breaks a week or so later? Too late! No way to give
| feedback.
| vachina wrote:
| Shopee allows you to post follow-up reviews, and gives you
| a grace period of 45 days to post reviews.
|
| If you want compare, at least compare with facts.
| henriquemaia wrote:
| I use shopee and find the reviews fair. Like everything
| else, you have to learn how to take the most out of a
| limited system.
|
| My experience so far has been good. Negative reviews seem
| fair, and give a good indication of what to expect (maybe
| I've lowered my expectations from the start).
| nottorp wrote:
| Temu/Aliexpress/etc are for buying very cheap clothing. 2 out
| of 3 items fit and 1 out of 3 is decent quality. That's still
| cheaper, depending on what tariffs your country is charging.
|
| I wouldn't buy something where a warranty would be useful from
| them.
|
| Ok, maybe very niche hobby products, but then I wouldn't expect
| a warranty.
| echoangle wrote:
| AliExpress is great for electronics. Not the ,,I need a
| phone" stuff (although for that it's fine too, I think), but
| more the ,,I need an ESP-32 module".
| squarefoot wrote:
| This. People buying a laptop there for ten bucks then
| receiving the photo of one have indeed all the rights to
| complain, but common sense should suggest them before the
| purchase the old saying that if something looks too good to
| be true... And this can happen everywhere there's no strict
| quality control or accountability. Aliexpress is great for
| small modules, SBCs, diy electronics in general, however I
| wouldn't ever buy semiconductors, batteries or memory
| modules there, as the risk of fakes or low quality clones
| is close to 100%.
| whatyesaid wrote:
| Yeah especially as in places like London there have been
| many explosions and house fires originaying from cheap
| foreign e-bike batteries.
|
| Some Chinese companies care about a long-term brand and
| place high standards on themselves but it's not true that
| anything online has passed safety standards. It's hard to
| differentiate the two due to the amount of fake reviews
| also.
| echoangle wrote:
| Yes, I would never buy something grid-powered from
| AliExpress, and I would be very careful with larger
| batteries.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Yes,also beware of power strips and electrical wires in
| general: those coming from there are increasingly made of
| coated iron instead of copper or brass in contacts. The
| side effect is a much higher resistance that makes the
| wire dissipate a lot more power than it should, even to
| the point it can overheat and catch fire if under serious
| load (heaters, ovens etc.). Their exceptionally bad
| insulation and usually smaller size than advertised make
| the problem even worse. Such bad cables can be used for
| breadboarding where small lengths and low currents
| mitigate the effects, but they shouldn't be considered
| for anything serious. I've learned to ditch almost every
| bundled cable coming from there after multiple bad
| experiences. Surplus is a good source of top notch cables
| that can last decades. Crappy cables can be checked using
| a magnet: pure copper ones won't stick. There are also
| reports of junk coated aluminium cables that wouldn't
| stick as well to a magnet, but they're rare as aluminium,
| at least good quality one, is not cheap.
| eurekin wrote:
| Concur. Even a planetary, cycloidal or strain wave
| reducers. To be honest, I don't know, where else I could
| find such diverse product catalog.
| nottorp wrote:
| Mouser/Farnell etc don't have those? Or i guess not as many
| options.
|
| I got my last esp-32 from Mouser iirc. In Europe. They
| finally sorted out EU fulfillment warehouses.
| echoangle wrote:
| You can get the base ESP-32 modules for example, but not
| most of the Dev Boards. They have some, but much more
| expensive than AliExpress. And then you also have to pay
| shipping.
| nottorp wrote:
| > And then you also have to pay shipping.
|
| Spoiled americans :) I've always had to pay shipping from
| anywhere outside my country.
| dymk wrote:
| It's basically McMaster with slow shipping for my hobby
| projects. I don't need the $1000 quality and warranty of a
| McMaster ball screw and linear guideways, the $80 BSTMOTION
| brand(?) stuff has been working for me for years and is
| plenty accurate.
| philjohn wrote:
| Not entirely.
|
| For cycling there are now a group of trusted companies that
| many people purchase from - WinSpace, Magene, iGPSport, that
| stand behind their products.
|
| I have a Magene p505 crank-based power meter - PS250
| delivered. It's as accurate as ones costing 4X as much, and
| has not shown any signs of issues in the year+ I've been
| using it.
|
| The idea that AliExpress is just for cheap tat is less and
| less true, and products in certain sectors coming out of
| China are just much better value for money (and often, as
| good as, or better quality) than you'd find from homegrown
| companies. For cycling, especially Carbon Fibre parts, this
| isn't surprising - the sheer depth and breadth of composites
| knowledge from years of making bikes for western brands has
| paid off handsomely.
| bharrison wrote:
| Obviously YMMV, but I bought some Amazon MTB pedals rated
| 4.7 starts @ 9k ratings. One suffered a catastrophic
| failure, shearing off at the crank and I was pitched over
| the bars.
|
| Design and manufacturing is obviously a major part of the
| equation with this product sector, and no doubt the Chinese
| can do that as good as, or even better than domestic brands
| in many respects. What they don't do as well, as far as I'm
| aware, is any significant destructive testing.
|
| The bonus is I can now spend even more absurd amounts of
| money on bike components, which is the true dream of any
| true cycling enthusiast.
| bkor wrote:
| > Obviously YMMV, but I bought some Amazon MTB pedals
| rated 4.7 starts @ 9k ratings.
|
| Every site is different, no? Amazon isn't AliExpress.
| Though lately Amazon if flooded with marked-up AliExpress
| stuff. I'm not fond of Amazon, their customer service is
| more of a hit and miss since various years.
|
| That said, I've been watching Trace Velo. He reviews a
| lot of AliExpress cycling things. It's often bad after
| prolonged use. Meaning, yeah, their testing is lacking.
| But some brand do seem to be trying to become a trusted
| brand. E.g. Ugreen nowadays is often trusted. It used to
| be one of the many things listed on AliExpress.
| frameset wrote:
| Amazon is AliExpress with onshore warehousing.
| philjohn wrote:
| Except the brands I'm talking about sell directly - the
| stuff you're buying on Amazon is the cheapest drop
| shipped products on Ali marked up ridiculously to extract
| the maximum profit.
| nolist_policy wrote:
| Amazon is AliExpress without the free market.
| philjohn wrote:
| Amazon is just not a good place to go, you're going to be
| buying something very low cost that someone is drop-
| shipping as a way to maximise their profit, not provide a
| good product.
|
| You need to know the brands to buy (Trace Velo, Peak
| Torque and China Cycling helps here) and buy directly
| from their Ali Express store, or from their website.
|
| Amazon is only if you need a cheap bike maintenance tool
| within a couple of days that you're happy only using a
| few times before you have to throw it out. Not for
| components.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| useless to know the brand. Amazon will change the seller
| every time you see an item, and pretend the reviews
| apply. then the new seller will ship you counterfeits
| while selling under the good brand and reviews. after a
| few sales, seller bestbikesbrooklin7456, is banned and
| you are offered bestevercyclesocal888 and the cycle
| restart.
| bkor wrote:
| > For cycling there are now a group of trusted companies
| that many people purchase from - WinSpace, Magene,
| iGPSport, that stand behind their products.
|
| Do you follow Trace Velo on YouTube? Any others you
| recommend (aside from China Cycling)?
| philjohn wrote:
| I do!
|
| I also follow Peak Torque, who is very hot on
| engineering. Hambini is ok, but pretty brash and
| abrasive.
| tpm wrote:
| > For cycling there are now a group of trusted companies
| that many people purchase from - WinSpace, Magene,
| iGPSport, that stand behind their products.
|
| Their products can also be bought either directly or from
| other bike-specialized shops, they don't sell exclusively
| through Aliexpress.
| philjohn wrote:
| Yes, that's very true - they also sell outside AliExpress
| D2C on their own sites.
|
| It tends to work out cheaper with the various AliExpress
| deals you can stack together to buy from there though.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > The idea that AliExpress is just for cheap tat is less
| and less true, and products in certain sectors coming out
| of China are just much better value for money (and often,
| as good as, or better quality) than you'd find from
| homegrown companies.
|
| Not just better value for money, I often find that
| AliExpress sells things I simply cannot find anywhere else.
|
| A recent example: I was looking for something to balance
| the 3rd axis on my telescope, There are very few products
| on the market from mainstream brands and none were what I
| needed. On Ali I easily found several options. These are
| basically just machined pieces of metal so not really
| anything than can break.
|
| Same goes for storage bags and cases. You can often find a
| bag or case specifically made for your device, while there
| isn't anything for sale locally.
| miunau wrote:
| Yeah, there are loads of cables, converters etc. that I
| can't get even from Amazon. Aliex has been the only
| place.
| wickedsight wrote:
| > I often find that AliExpress sells things I simply
| cannot find anywhere else.
|
| I recently needed some bearings for a project. I wanted
| them quickly, so AliExpress would take too long. I
| visited 5 local stores and none of them sold the bearings
| I needed. AliExpress had 200 sellers selling them in
| every possible type for a decent price.
|
| Ended up buying AliExpress quality from Amazon for a
| higher price because they shipped faster.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| >These are basically just machined pieces of metal so not
| really anything than can break.
|
| Nothing can break but the metal can be alloyed with lead
| to make it easier to machine or coated in something
| toxic.
| mogrim wrote:
| Likewise in trail running, Aonijie is building a decent
| reputation for accessories.
| imiric wrote:
| > Temu/Aliexpress/etc are for buying very cheap clothing.
|
| As long as you don't value safety.[1]
|
| [1]: https://www.news.com.au/national/queensland/news/skin-
| melted...
| krageon wrote:
| If you actually read the article you see this garment
| lacked a "flammable" label. It's not the flammability that
| wouldn't happen, it's _just_ a tiny warning.
|
| This article is outrage bait, especially obvious given the
| incredibly graphic pictures and the high focus on emotional
| statements combined with the low amount of actually
| important detail (what went wrong? It's not what you or the
| article are implying, which is the fire risk).
| marcusb wrote:
| > Ok, maybe very niche hobby products, but then I wouldn't
| expect a warranty.
|
| I bought a bunch of parts for a racing drone from Aliexpress
| because I didn't expect a traditional retailer's warranty to
| really matter much. ("This frame has been in a crash. No
| warranty.") What's the point of paying extra in that
| scenario?
| Double_a_92 wrote:
| My experience (with Aliexpress) is that you usually get what
| you pay for.
| poisonborz wrote:
| You really expect that kind of support from something ahipped
| across the globe for peanuts? Ali/Temu and the kind serve
| specific purposes and they do it well.
|
| I find reviews on those sites still useful, and at least on Ali
| there are a fair number of negative ones as well. Users tell if
| a specific part works with Home Assistant or zigbee2mqt.
|
| I suggest to sort by order number and not stars.
| mort96 wrote:
| The "kind of support" they say they expect is the ability to
| leave a negative review. That doesn't seem too extreme of an
| expectation honestly. The only reason support came into the
| picture is that Temu redirected them to support.
| lodovic wrote:
| But that is unfair competition against rule-abiding vendors.
| Platforms like Ali and Temu should face the most strict
| limitations for that alone.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| "That kind of support" is the absolute bare minimum. If
| you're not even providing that then you're not fit to sell
| anything, _at any price_.
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| Ebay do something similar too. You can immediately provide
| positive feedback, but you have to wait 7 days to add negative
| feedback. This is ostensibly to encourage sellers to address
| issues to retain reputation. Sellers can also get negative
| feedback removed after the fact by doing refunds, etc.
|
| This means high volume low value sellers have little incentive
| to actually properly describe things or post correctly. A
| common issue I keep seeing is sellers using slower postage than
| paid for. You can immediately see from the tracking number,
| even if you wait 7+ days to submit feedback, you'll get a
| 'sorry' refund and the feedback is somehow 'addressed' without
| them going back in time and delivering it faster.
|
| Online reviews are just a sham now, Goodhart's law etc as even
| if the reviews aren't fake, they're encouraged or incentivised
| from real customers. Look up any service provider on TrustPilot
| and it's the same: hundreds of 5-star reviews from people told
| to add a review just after signing up, a dozen 1-star reviews
| from bad customer service, and barely anything in between.
| chrisandchris wrote:
| We have gotten to the point where you can't leave a bad review
| on aggregation sellers (like Temu/Ali/Amazon) because if you
| could, your competitor will for sure buy some farm in
| Taiwan/wherever and destroy your reputation.
| seydor wrote:
| i dont know how long temu will last without americans, but it
| feels surreal that europeans have more buying power than
| americans
| frankacter wrote:
| latest stats I saw had US at ~53%, followed by 12.9% Mexico,
| 7.4% United Kingdom, 6.4% France, 6.0% Germany, 4.6% Spain &
| 9.8% Others.
| blitzar wrote:
| I don't know how long America will last without temu (or
| wallmart)
| simianwords wrote:
| Americans definitely have more buying power than Europe. This
| doesn't look to be true.
| moooo99 wrote:
| If you use the PPP adjusted per capita GDP as a comparison
| metric the US stands about 37% higher than the EU.
| Considering the baseline tariff of 10% and the substantially
| higher tariffs for important trading partners the US targets,
| it may actually even out.
| simianwords wrote:
| Does this include the fact that tariffs negatively affect
| even the EU GDP?
| baq wrote:
| Tariffs in the US affect the whole world, not just US or
| EU - every single GDP goes down, the question is how
| much. EU gets hit less than the US is more or less a
| given, but error bars are significant.
| wesselbindt wrote:
| But GDP (PPP) is not the same as purchasing power, no? I
| don't know of any actual data but you can imagine two
| countries, both with the same GDP (PPP), same population
| size, shared currency (so the PPP doesn't factor in). One
| has organized its production and labor force in such a way
| that everyone has a relatively equal share of the pie, and
| the other one consists of a massive wage slave class
| getting by on poverty wages and a privileged few who reap
| the benefits of production. Surely the first of these two
| countries is more interesting to global ecommerce companies
| from a sales perspective.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Ads was THE thing that our tech industry was exporting to the
| world. I was astonished with the people who thought that tech
| would be not affected by the tariffs.
| fastball wrote:
| That doesn't make sense, as ads are useless without consumption
| (i.e. imports). We did manage to monetize our consumption thru
| ads though.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| The world is still consuming. Even if the US tariffs everyone
| else, they still trade amongst themselves. The real risk to
| our economy is that the rest of the world stops paying for
| our services and cultural exports.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Trump is going to try to pressure other countries into
| putting tariffs on China etc in return for a trade deal
| with the USA.
|
| Several (EU, Japan and more) have said they won't agree to
| this.
| jajko wrote:
| Sometimes, one stands up to the bully even if its not the
| most convenient thing to do, something about morals and
| culture. Bully thinks this is some arab market with
| standalone greedy participants just like himself, while
| the game is anything but that.
|
| Bipolar bully on top just generates random chaos, the
| best course is to cut oneself off as much as possible as
| quickly as possible, which is clearly happening behind
| the curtains
| chvid wrote:
| As far as I know in Europe TEMU sends stuff from local
| fulfillment centers.
|
| So maybe TEMU US can return in that form if the trade conflict
| settles.
| Symbiote wrote:
| They aim to send 80% from European warehouses, but it's less
| than a year since they started so there's no figure for the
| current amount.
|
| The tax is the same either way, since they collect VAT for
| packages sent from China. The advantage is the faster delivery
| time.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| I wonder what the environmental impact of this would be.
| skwee357 wrote:
| Aren't Temu/Shein considered to be ultra-low-quality garbage,
| mostly? Don't people haul their items in order to promote their
| useless Instagram/TikTok, so their followers will buy the same
| ultra-low-quality garbage?
|
| Don't get me wrong. I'm in favor of direct access to overseas
| markets, rather than local distributors slapping 200% margin on
| Chinese sourced/produced items that you can buy from AliExpress.
| But I'm not in favor of flooding the market with cheap, toxic,
| unsafe, non-lasting crap that ends up in landfill in a few weeks
| or days.
|
| So no, I don't feel sorry for Temu.
| lilwobbles wrote:
| I don't get this argument. All the cheap, toxic, unsafe, non-
| lasting crap will still exist, it's just going to be sold on
| Amazon with 1-day shipping. Consumers want these products and
| the market just fills the demand. The deregulation that will
| take place under this administration will lead to even more,
| toxic, unsafe crap flooding the market, except it'll just be
| manufactured in the U.S.
| skwee357 wrote:
| The same item on Amazon will cost x2/3 times than Temu, if
| you will be able to find the same item at all, meaning it
| cuts a big chunk of the potential buyers of the cheap crap.
|
| The world would have been a better place if we hadn't been
| allowed to flood the market with cheap crap. Not only it
| creates enormous waste, it also means that reputable brands
| now start to cut corners in order to compete with cheap no
| name crap.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >meaning it cuts a big chunk of the potential buyers of the
| cheap crap.
|
| No. Really not much at all.
|
| The US cut 330 million or so people out of a market of
| billions setting it up so the rest of the world starts
| getting a competitive advantage over the US.
|
| >it also means that reputable brands now start to cut
| corners in order to compete with cheap no name crap.
|
| LOLOLOL. You do not think like a capitalist. They didn't go
| "oh no I have to cut corners". They saw they could cut
| corners on costs _decades_ ago. China has been building
| your name brand products for as long half the people on HN
| have been alive. If you look at Tiktok now, they are out
| right showing the factories building products you are
| paying hundreds /thousands for in the US for 20-50 dollars.
|
| The US screwed itself with huge consolidations and rent
| seeking behaviors. We are paying huge amounts for products
| and not getting the value we deserve.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| No idea about Temu, but I've been told that some clothes from
| Shein are better and cheaper than what we sometimes find in the
| cheaper local stores (UK).
| constantcrying wrote:
| I hope temu and the other Chinese companies in that segment stop
| selling overseas. Their model is just incredibly destructive to
| the environment, they ship over the lowest quality garbage
| imaginable and create so much pollution and waste in the process.
|
| I also have quite a bit of disdain for people using these sites.
| Nobody needs this and it is just harmful all around.
| Renaud wrote:
| You will find the exact same items on Amazon, except usually
| more expensive.
|
| There are many items sold on Aliexpress that are of decent
| quality.
|
| I think the point is to buy what you really need, and focus on
| quality, rather than impulse buying cheap stuff that ends up in
| the garbage after a month.
|
| Our consumerism is hooked onto cheap crap, the factories
| producing it are only fulfilling the demand.
| bmicraft wrote:
| Demand doesn't need to get fulfilled. The people profiting
| off this are still the other half of the problem.
| 0xEF wrote:
| I did an experiment for my blog awhile back that never got
| written up (lack of time, mostly), but it is was just me
| ordering about $30US of stuff from Temu to see why they were so
| aggressively marketing themselves, the app auto-installing on
| my Samsung smartphone I have for work, etc.
|
| The experience left me feeling very, very dirty.
|
| The items in question were some small fire sticks for camping,
| a couple of solar portable power banks, and two small canvas
| backpacks. Each arrived in separate packages on different days,
| all shipped from what appeared to be the same CA facility, so
| right off the bat, we're two strikes against environmental
| friendliness.
|
| The items were, as you'd expect, utter trash.
|
| - Fire Sicks: these are those magnesium bars shaped like a
| little key that you strike with a piece of metal to create a
| spark, this allowing you to maybe start a fire. Now, I've been
| starting camp fires without flame for most of my life (probably
| the only thing I took away from my time in the Boy Scouts), so
| I've seen plenty of junk products that claim to do the same,
| but these take the cake. The actual "magnesium" bar was coated
| in a thick black paint for some reason? And the striking tool
| is a flimsy piece of aluminum coated in orange paint. Useless.
| I had to use a bit of sandpaper to remove the paint, giving
| access to the metal parts of both tools, and even then, the
| spark created was barely hot enough to catch a pile of dead
| leaves on fire. I don't know what they actually used to make
| these, but don't assume they will save your butt in a survival
| situation
|
| - "Solar" Battery Bank: these are just regular USB power banks
| with a an extremely inefficient photovoltaic panel glued on. It
| is only capable of powering the green "charging" LED but
| definitely does not recharge the power bank itself. After I
| discharged them to see how long it would take to recharge with
| the solar panel, they sat in direct sunlight for 3 full days
| before I gave up with no additional power stored. However,
| they're not a total loss. They still work as you'd expect a
| regular USB power bank would, rechargeable with a typical
| micro-USB cord with two outputs to charge your devices. Didn't
| notice any weird voltages when charging my stuff, either. At
| the very least, they will not end up in a landfill because I
| can make use of them on camping trips.
|
| - Canvas Backpack: the stitching is a joke, so don't expect to
| put anything heavy in these. My wife sews as a hobby, ended up
| deconstructing them and reinforcing them with some proper
| canvas material that made them way more rugged and able to hold
| gear (I use one for fishing magnet crap and the other for rock-
| hounding tools) but we could not help but wonder just how
| little the workers were paid to paid these garbage bags and
| what those conditions are like.
|
| Their business model is built entirely on selling you garbage
| you do not need that will likely just be thrown away after a
| few (if any) uses unless you are more diy, willing to try to
| find ways to make things work or repurpose them. The entire
| shopping experience is gamified with spinning wheels and
| lightning deals, coupons falling from the sky, etc, to the
| point where it was ridiculous and intrusively preventing from
| searching for things I wanted to order. It felt like their
| target audience was the old ladies I see spending 8 hours a day
| glue to the chair of a slot machine in the local casinos. It
| was so absurd I felt like was in a cartoon about consumerism
| and actually experienced guilt for having conducted the
| experiment.
| constantcrying wrote:
| I personally am always weary of cheap power banks. Given the
| rest of the corners cut on the device, how sure are you that
| the circuitry and the batteries themselves are of acceptable
| safety standards.
|
| Even the batteries in expensive devices can become dangerous
| and I would assume that those undergo some higher leven of
| QA, testing and safety standards.
| 0xEF wrote:
| Paying more =/= quality, unfortunately. Believe me, I wish
| it were otherwise. Don't be afraid to open up those battery
| banks now and then if you want to be sure, put a meter on
| them and scope them if you know how, but you'll find what I
| typically find; a lot of the same cheap components all
| wrapped in a pretty package. But because one came from
| China and one was "made" in the USA, you'll pay a lot more
| for one than you will the other. You can probably guess
| which.
|
| I say that as someone who works in manufacturing as a
| controls and repair tech for industrial IoT and
| electromechanical integrations (I wear a lot of hats, long
| story). Trusted brands like Rockwell, Siemens, etc aren't
| really doing anything that much different than their
| cheaper competitors and they know it. It's a big part of
| the reason why their business model includes aggressive
| pushes to keep their customer "in their world," so to
| speak, trying to be a one-stop-shop for all their control
| needs when good number of applications really don't need
| anything beyond a Koyo Click PLC you can get used for $50
| on eBay instead of the $1200 A/B unit. Heck, I've seen
| automation cells that could have the PLC swapped out with a
| $20 Arduino and nobody would know the difference except the
| controls guy. I'd love to say this over-priced cult-like
| hooey is restricted to the automation industry, but it's
| definitely not, and bleeds all over a variety of consumer
| industries, especially those of personal electronics. We
| are getting ripped off left and right, but if there's a
| fruit logo or some inventor's name we recognize on the
| packaging, we're okay taking out a second mortgage to
| afford it.
|
| In the end, the quality standards in many cases are just a
| lot of hot air, CYA statements and sales BS. Price is
| really dictated by the customer's perception of the
| product, and when you create that trust, legitimate or not,
| you get to price your product much higher than your
| competitor, regardless if your product is _actually_ better
| than theirs. They get away with this because, for the most
| part, customers don't take the screws out and actually look
| inside.
|
| Now, that is not to say my experience is always true. There
| are plenty of companies that make their quality standards
| and testing pretty transparent so the consumer can review
| them at their leisure and make a choice. I'm just saying
| most do not, which creates a lot of shadowy areas where
| many companies can get away with things simply because they
| know nobody is looking and taking their word at face value.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Do you really believe that the same safety standards
| apply to all products?
|
| I bought an Anker Battery bank, which got recalled for
| some safety issue. There is absolutely zero doubt in my
| mind that some random Chinese seller would not have
| bothered with any of that. Likely such a safety issue
| would have never come to light.
|
| Battery production is in China anyways. Do you believe
| that all Chinese companies adhere to the same standards
| and that companies who are trying to get some kind of
| brand reputation in the west would still choose the
| complete bottom end of battery production?
| 0xEF wrote:
| I don't think you read my whole comment, but carry on.
| constantcrying wrote:
| I did and I agree with most of it.
|
| It was also irrelevant to my point, which was exclusively
| about the dangers of very low quality batteries.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| The difference is that you can sue Siemens and Rockwell
| if it explodes but good luck suing Temu seller. This
| creates a financial incentive for qa.
| isatty wrote:
| I understand it was an experiment but camping supplies are
| the very last thing I'd order from a site whose entire
| purpose is to peddle low quality garbage.
| robocat wrote:
| > create so much pollution and waste in the process
|
| Your environmental footprint depends on your income and your
| country.
|
| Everything bought is environmentally unfriendly in proportion
| to the cost.
|
| The only exception is something where the only purpose is to be
| environmentally good (maybe planting some trees, maybe
| something that reduces energy usage).
|
| Complaining about specific things being bad is _almost_
| pointless.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >Your environmental footprint depends on your income and your
| country.
|
| No, it depends on what you _do_ with that income.
|
| >Everything bought is environmentally unfriendly in
| proportion to the cost.
|
| Plainly false. E.g. more expensive things made of natural
| materials and lasting for a long time create much less
| landfill than products which are cheap but last only a short
| time.
|
| I own expensive shelfs which my parent bought for me as a
| child decades ago. They are literally "as good as new", much
| of the IKEA furniture I had to replace. Clearly the IKEA
| furniture had a bigger impact, although it was "cheaper".
|
| >Complaining about specific things being bad is almost
| pointless.
|
| All complaining I do is pointless. Obviously no institution
| who could force change is making decisions based on my HN
| posts.
| frontfor wrote:
| You are speaking from the position of privilege. Not
| everyone is as lucky as you are in your country, let alone
| the world.
| robocat wrote:
| > create much less landfill
|
| But maybe bought from a salesman with a Humvee and a
| artisan that spends every last cent on overseas travel
|
| The issue is that trying to analyse the breakdown of $ by
| environmental outcomes is hard.
|
| There is a lot of propoganda about how to be
| environmentally sound. We tend to pick one dimension like
| trash output. We lack the information to be able to make
| better balanced decisions, for example sometimes the
| throwaway thing is better for the environment.
|
| > expensive shelfs
|
| I think that example is selection bias. I'm sure you can
| think of plenty of expensively wasteful examples too (it's
| easiest to look at other people to find that).
|
| Counter-factual: I made some shelves from waste-stream
| offcuts, and other shelves were going to be thrown out.
| Plus costs to paint them (much much less than even the
| cheapest of new shelves).
| anal_reactor wrote:
| > they ship over the lowest quality garbage imaginable and
| create so much pollution and waste in the process.
|
| Lots of words for "I ordered something on Temu once, got
| scammed, now the whole industry should burn down"
| constantcrying wrote:
| I have never ordered anything on temu and I never will.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| It's really interesting to see people being ignorant, and
| proud of their ignorance. Imagine someone saying "All
| American products are garbage. And I obviously never bought
| anything American, why on Earth would I buy garbage?"
| constantcrying wrote:
| It is really interesting to see people making up stuff in
| their heads. Nowhere did I talk about "all", obviously
| Chinese factories can produce extremely high quality
| products. E.g. iPhones.
|
| Temu is a trash distributor, the race to the bottom needs
| to be stopped. Their entire business model is being cheap
| and shipping trash.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| > Their entire business model is being cheap and shipping
| trash.
|
| [citation needed]
|
| I spent a few thousand on items on AliExpress, and I'm
| satisfied with almost all of them. How come?
| constantcrying wrote:
| Because you are a consumer and someone who enjoys trash.
|
| To be honest "consumer" is really one of the worst things
| to call someone, but I think it applies very well to
| someone like you.
| d3nj4l wrote:
| It's amazing how not only can you decide what others can
| and should buy, you can also decide the quality of that
| item for them sight unseen. You should reach out to TV
| producers - this skill would be very entertaining in a
| show!
| constantcrying wrote:
| Yes, I am very intelligent for figuring out that
| products, made under near slavery conditions with the
| sole goal of making them as cheaply as possible by
| companies who have exactly zero reputation and whose
| customers have no way to retaliate are in fact bad. This
| was an extremely complex deduction on my part and in no
| way totally obvious.
|
| Also, things that are very bad for the environment should
| be banned. Not by me, but by the government.
| genewitch wrote:
| I guess, like the rest of the positive comments, they
| conflate quantity of choice with quality of choice. I
| stopped buying stuff online mostly a few years back,
| covid completely destroyed my trust in online retailers,
| especially ones with China backed products.
|
| I don't get the desire to pollute some other country just
| so one can have a hobby, go volunteer at a shelter or
| something useful.
|
| Externalizing our negativity got the US pretty far, and
| if walking that back sucks for most people because
| they're used to buying literal land fill, then that's too
| bad.
| vachina wrote:
| If you pay peanuts obviously you're gonna get garbage. You
| chose to buy garbage, why blame the producer lol.
| constantcrying wrote:
| I don't buy anything from temu, but I also want that nobody
| else buys stuff from temu.
| properpopper wrote:
| Good that you're not a policy maker. I'll order something
| from temu today
| constantcrying wrote:
| Thanks for your help in destroying the planet I guess.
| kccqzy wrote:
| It's just a natural byproduct of poverty and a shrinking middle
| class in the United States. HN readers are not the target
| customers of Temu. It's those people who are living paycheck-
| to-paycheck and can't afford quality goods whatsoever. It's the
| same as the low quality garbage found in predatory dollar
| stores in poor neighborhoods.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| I first learned about Temu when someone I barely knew messaged me
| saying they needed me to sign up to Temu under some referral code
| so they could get bonus points to shop more. They were addicted
| to shopping, and Temu was the most addictive thing on the
| internet. Like the Dollar Store, Amazon, slots, and a pyramid
| scheme, rolled into one.
| pndy wrote:
| Speaking of, anyone else has encountered issues while browsing
| temu? I'm facing captcha's most of the time. I mean the "slide to
| move piece into a position" which most of the times fails, after
| which I'm facing a more "difficult" pick object of color repeated
| etc. The site also after a while of browsing not logged in pushes
| me into login page. So I wonder if it's my browser and various
| adblocking extensions or it's a common thing?
| j16sdiz wrote:
| almost always because your adblocking extensions. They plants
| cookies and checks for that, and they never have to obverse
| gpdr.
|
| They do cross domain requests to keep those trackers around.
|
| adblocking extension hates cross-domain tracking.
| pndy wrote:
| Damn, I forgot about cross-domain tracking. I'm either
| browsing or shopping on every platform in private mode -
| perhaps that also rolls me onto... the great captcha wall.
| forinti wrote:
| The Temu ads I see are so awful that they totally put me off from
| even wanting to look at their site.
| 0xTJ wrote:
| Good. They're pushing overpriced low-quality junk. If you want to
| buy from Temu but want a better chance at reasonable prices, shop
| AliExpress.
| bognition wrote:
| Not only that, their ads are incredibly invasive, often taking
| over the majority of a page.
| RankingMember wrote:
| Whoever's doing the "design" on Temu and Ali seems to think
| all Americans want to feel like they're in Vegas while
| shopping. It's very obnoxious, to the point that people have
| created plug-ins to clean things up (e.g. AliTools Shopping
| Assistant, AliRadar).
| WorldPeas wrote:
| Thanks for pointing that out. Several times I've seen
| adapters or tools I could use only to click them and it
| sends me to a sale list I can't find the original product
| in. How hard is it to have a grid of clickable jpegs
| arghwhat wrote:
| Temu vs. AliExpress is usually a shipment speed vs. cost
| tradeoff. Their catalogues also differ quite a bit in some
| areas, so sometimes one has to use one or the other.
|
| I feel like AliExpress has improved in this area though, likely
| due to pressure from Temu.
| 34679 wrote:
| A few months ago, I had an AliExpress order beat an Amazon
| order to my house. I wasn't using Prime, but the AliExpress
| order did ship from China. It took about a week.
| matsemann wrote:
| Is it any difference than shopping from Amazon, except you
| don't have to pay the dropshipping markup?
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Worse support. Amazon usually will try and make you whole-
| ish, aliexpress is like lmao
| Gasp0de wrote:
| That is not my experience with AliExpress. I usually just
| got my money back when I complained.
| neves wrote:
| They just make it very hard to complain. And it always is
| necessary to do a lot of back and forth
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| They're more likely to only give a few dollars back
| rather than a full refund
| RankingMember wrote:
| You have to call their bluff when they try to pull that,
| they don't want you to ship stuff back either. I got a
| full refund after a few back and forths of "are you
| _sure_ you want to ship that back for a refund?? ".
| Zak wrote:
| It probably varies based on item price and how obvious
| the issue is. I had two sub-$10 items arrive visibly
| broken recently and got refunds in under 5 minutes.
| RankingMember wrote:
| Hmm, with one exception, every time I've had an issue it
| was resolved with a full refund within 5 minutes. They do
| make you give them a picture of the issue.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| IMO Temu and Aliexpress/Alibaba market themselves in a very
| different way. In many ways I consider Aliexpress to be more
| reputable just because they don't try to pull the wool over
| your eyes with their products. With Temu they try to make it
| seem like the products are just as good as what you get at
| Walmart. With Aliexpress at least they just straight up tell
| you they are a "front" for all the factories in Shenzhen.
|
| I found Aliexpress to be great for retro gaming consoles, for
| anyone interested and willing to wait, you can get an "R36S"
| which can play all the old gameboy games and other retro games
| for ~$30.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Compared to everything else it feels pretty minor but I'm
| fairly worried about the handheld retro gaming market. I
| really enjoy it as a hobby but it seems like almost all of
| those devices will no longer be profitable / worth buying if
| the tariffs are enforced on them.
|
| I've been really enjoying my recent Anbernic RG 406V and it
| can play pretty much all the systems I want it to so I guess
| I'll just stick to that if the handheld market collapses.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| The "de minimis" exemption, which previously allowed low-
| value packages (under $800) from China to enter the U.S.
| duty-free, is being phased out. This change, announced by
| the White House, will impact popular e-commerce platforms
| like Temu and Shein, potentially leading to higher prices
| for consumers. The de minimis exemption is being ended
| because it's being seen as a trade loophole that allows
| low-value goods to enter the country without paying import
| duties. The change is expected to take effect on May 2,
| with a new system in place to collect duties on small-value
| packages.
|
| Well you have until May 2nd to order tarrif free fyi. Most
| people dont realuze this.
| burningChrome wrote:
| The other advantage with Alibaba is you can interact directly
| with the companies doing the manufacturing.
|
| Several years ago, I was frustrated with the insane costs of
| hockey sticks. I'd been going through sticks at about a 6-8
| month clip since high school and having to buy $300 hockey
| sticks every six months was not something I was happy about.
|
| I got on Alibaba, sent out several emails saying I was an
| equipment manager for a US based hockey team. The team was
| looking to get some stock sticks for backups since players
| were going through sticks like crazy.
|
| I emailed two companies who did carbon fiber manufacturing.
| One company made one-piece composite sticks that were blank.
| You could tell them what length, flex, lie and blade pattern
| you wanted and then if you wanted 12K or 14K carbon fibre. I
| got two 12K blanks. They were impressively durable and lasted
| for well over a year. Almost twice as long as my expensive
| retail sticks. They were a little more whippy than I was used
| to, but it was easy getting used to it.
|
| The other company was a bit shady. The first email I got back
| was someone asking me how many top of the line Bauer sticks I
| needed. I asked him how that was possible and he just said he
| had access and just give him the specs and they'll send them
| out. I ordered two of those to boot thinking it was a pretty
| big gamble. Turns out they were legit. My buddies who used
| the same retail model couldn't tell the difference. We went
| over the graphics and couldn't see any difference either.
| Ironically, I still have one of these Bauer 1X Lite sticks
| that I use when I get down to a single stick and I'm waiting
| for the newer ones to ship.
|
| Interestingly enough, by the time I had gone through three of
| the sticks, suddenly there were several companies popping up
| offering "blank" sticks for a fraction of the cost of the
| retail sticks. Effectively doing the same thing I did, but
| now as legit hockey companies trying to save players some
| money. All told, I think I spent around $500 for the 4 sticks
| I bought. A fraction of what retail sticks would've cost. I
| haven't gone back and ordered more sticks, just because
| there's so many pro stock stuff out there and so many other
| companies selling these blanks now.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| There's a different cost vs. shipping tradeoff between the two.
| I use Temu for little electronic things (OLED panels with
| breakout header pins, microcontroller boards, breadboards,
| etc). For that purpose, Temu's prices are much better than any
| domestic seller, for a product that is exactly the same for my
| purposes. And, unlike Aliexpress, it won't take a fiscal
| quarter for your stuff to arrive.
| paxys wrote:
| I have ordered loads of stuff off Aliexpress, in the exact
| category you described. Never taken more than ~1 week to
| reach. Aliexpress shipping is actually quicker than Amazon if
| you don't have Prime.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| AliExpress shipping has gotten noticeably faster even over
| the five years that I've been using it. Just about everything
| arrives within a week now.
| lifeisgood99 wrote:
| I'm having the same experience. On one of my packages, the
| sender address was a local warehouse. I suspect Ali is
| warehousing outside of China.
| jillyboel wrote:
| They do and they tell you where it's shipped from on the
| checkout page
| jillyboel wrote:
| AliExpress stuff arrives within a week nowadays. I am in the
| EU and often it even ships from a warehouse in the EU.
|
| When was the last time you used it? It was definitely true a
| few years ago.
| coliveira wrote:
| The idea that Temu is gonna end is nonsense. First of all, the
| US is just one market for them. They're red hot in many
| countries in latin America, Asia, Africa and so many others.
| Moreover, I guess they'll eventually find other ways to sell
| products in the USA, in one way or another.
| fckgw wrote:
| What's the difference between them and Wish.com then? Wish
| eventually failed, but Temu still seems to be trucking along.
| coliveira wrote:
| Temu has direct access to producers of the items they sell.
| They know what categories are profitable, having incredible
| logistics directly tied to Chinese industry. Wish, from
| what I can getter, was just an American middle man.
| neves wrote:
| There's an art to buy good products from AliExpress. You must
| order by number of items sold. See bad reviews. See the seller
| rate.
|
| They are making each time more difficult to assert the product
| quality. I'm super careful, but still sometimes buy from seller
| SHOP123456789
| j245 wrote:
| Applies to eBay and Amazon too ..
| RankingMember wrote:
| Part of my AliExpress purchasing workflow is checking reviews
| for the item I'm about to buy on Amazon, as they're (usually)
| higher quality than the "just received item, 5 stars" reviews
| on AliExpress.
| sixothree wrote:
| I've had so much good luck with AliExpress. I wouldn't order
| anything I might need to return. But I've never received
| something that needed that. I can't begin to describe how
| disappointing these tariffs are going to be for me. It's not as
| if I can or ever will be able to buy these things locally.
| grey-area wrote:
| Interesting dynamic here with echoes of the .com bubble where
| there is a huge web of industries all dependent on the current
| setup continuing and money being available for consumer spending
| and ads - when that dries up it will impact not just those
| selling goods imported from China, but everyone in the US.
|
| Disrupting US trade quickly with massive global tariffs will
| cause all sorts of secondary effects like a massive downturn in
| ad spending - directly affecting companies like Meta and Google
| who look insulated right now because they don't sell physical
| products.
|
| Not a great time to be dependent on ad revenue.
| flappyeagle wrote:
| Conclusion is wrong here. There's plenty of bid for the ad
| inventory. Google and meta are extremely resilient to this kind
| of thing
| grey-area wrote:
| Even when this kind of thing is a global recession and the
| end of US supremacy?
|
| If they stick with the tariffs we'll see I guess though it
| seems likely Trump will have to back down.
| bgnn wrote:
| I can't see how can add industry be resilient to recession.
| Maybe if you switch to selling ads for government propaganda?
| crowcroft wrote:
| Advertising on the whole is not recession proof[1],
| although in the last two dips Google showed growth in ad
| revenue[2], and Meta was relatively stable[3].
|
| The first thing that gets cut is 'new channels' and
| experiments (read: channels that have bad measurable ROI).
| Pinterest, X, Snap.
|
| After that it's the most 'wasteful' brand spending/high
| cost per reach broadcast media that gets cut. Cinema, local
| TV, and increasingly nationwide TV.
|
| Then when the economy comes back to growth there's a
| broader recalibration of budgets.
|
| Because Google search has a very simple, easy to understand
| impact on sales they actually grew faster in recessions.
| Then when the recession ends brands don't see any reason to
| cut that spending.
|
| 1 - https://www.ibisworld.com/us/bed/total-advertising-
| expenditu... 2-
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-
| reven... 3 -
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/268604/annual-revenue-
| of...
| netcan wrote:
| Google search (and online direct marketing broadly) have
| pretty direct impact on sales. It's true that they held
| up well, relative to "traditional advertising" in recent
| downturn.
|
| However... there are a lot of money losing campaigns out
| there. A lot of that relates to economic buoyancy.
| Startups showing growth for the next round. But also
| established companies getting into new sectors, defending
| market share, etc.
|
| We are still, I think, in a "greed mode" economy. Fear
| hasn't really shown it's face yet. If that switch
| flips... I suspect meta/alphabet will be impacted this
| time.
|
| It's really hard to tell though.
| grey-area wrote:
| Not sure experiences from the covid recession tell us
| anything. That was a very short sharp shock followed by
| massive bailouts and stimulus for companies and
| individuals. The figures for that time period are not
| useful as comparators.
| netcan wrote:
| So generally speaking, advertising is not resilient to
| downturn.
|
| In 2008, there was an expectation of revenue loss. But
| because Google "direct advertising" directly affects
| sales... it was more like "sales" than traditional
| "marketing" in this respect.
|
| In 2025, it may be different. We shall see.
|
| I don't think much online ad revenue is related to physical
| products. The margin available for ad spend on physical
| goods is much slimmer. But... it's hard to predict 3rd
| order effects.
| etchalon wrote:
| Temu's whole grift was subsidized products and subsided shipping
| and both of those things are no longer available why would they
| continue to worry about the US?
| josefresco wrote:
| Lot of "good they only sell crap" comments here. Would you guys
| feel the same about your neighborhood dollar store?
| gaiagraphia wrote:
| Yes. Your spending is a far more powerful vote than any
| democratic process. Your society is what it spends on. A
| society addicted to cheap trash is going to be precisely that.
|
| These 'dollar stores' are wealth extraction centres, which
| don't really provide anything to society other than enriching a
| dropshipping middle class and foreign exploitative factory
| owner class. There's very little value being created.
|
| I'd far rather support places where purchases have numerous
| positive externalities, whether it be from labour conditions to
| promoting curiosity, or from environmental impacts, to building
| local communities.
|
| Society was doing quite ok until the greedy middleman classes
| decided to render the domestic working classes irrelevant for a
| little short-term profit, just so we can buy new LED lights, or
| change our t-shirt collection every week.
| zamalek wrote:
| The dollar store moves into neighborhoods that are impoverished
| as part of their strategy, and push out family owned businesses
| and would be competition through extreme saturation.
|
| I'd love to see them go.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/19/business/dollar-general-oppos...
| mmmlinux wrote:
| Dollar general is not a "dollar store" where everything costs
| a dollar. not even dollar tree is that now though...
| margalabargala wrote:
| Temu and Shein sell cheap crap.
|
| Dollar stores sell cheap crap and destroy communities.
|
| So no, I don't feel quite the same about them.
| tantalor wrote:
| > shut off Google Shopping ads... App Store ranking subsequently
| plummeting
|
| Are they implying that app store ranking was quid pro quo for ads
| buys?
| wickedsight wrote:
| App store ranking is based on installs. Ads drive people to
| install the app. Less ads -> less installs -> lower ranking.
| Seems like a logical consequence.
| sfmike wrote:
| its also seo linkjuice as they are links
| duxup wrote:
| I don't know about quid pro quo but those ads are content on
| the internet so I would assume that would drop SEO and new
| installs.
|
| One of the strange patterns with Google is that quid pro quo is
| hard to even filter out as in some cases it is actually a
| natural part of the system. Probably a bad thing.
| ajross wrote:
| HN can't stop being HN. Scary article about a global trade war
| gets interpreted as "Wait, is Google actually behind this?!"
| gruez wrote:
| How does this make sense? Google isn't affiliated with the App
| Store (note the capitals), and instead it's operated by its
| competitor.
| orasis wrote:
| App Store ranking is determined heavily by install volume.
| gruez wrote:
| The parent commenter implied something far more sinister
| with "quid pro quo".
| tantalor wrote:
| I take "App Store" as generic to mean any app store, like
| Apple's or Google's
| gruez wrote:
| >App Store (note the capitals)
| stusmall wrote:
| They directly say what they mean in the article
|
| > The company's inability to maintain app performance without
| advertising for even a single day demonstrates the fragility of
| its market position.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| Could the two have a common cause? What if Temu stopped buying
| ads and consumers stopped installing the Temu app for one and
| the same reason, namely that trade barriers are being erected
| that will make Temu unpalatable for many users, something
| widely publicized and known both to Temu and consumers?
| zamalek wrote:
| I wonder if we can look forward to the end of the letter soup
| brands on Amazon, it's ridiculously difficult finding real brands
| in between them.
|
| That would be one silver lining in all this mess, at least.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| 15 different variants of the same product, all obviously
| cheaply made from the same factory, with varying degrees of
| quality control and reviews strewn about the various "brands"
| of the product so that it's much harder to have a negative
| review everywhere.
|
| Yeah, this sucks. Though the correct thing to do here is to
| enforce this hygiene on the platforms themselves. They have
| every resource and means to be able to prevent this kind of
| thing from happening. It's just more profitable for them not to
| _heimdall wrote:
| I ended up drastically cutting back on Amazon purchases when
| they started getting flooded with brands like that.
|
| Its absolutely on Amazon to maintain quality. There are
| certain brands and types of products I'll order there because
| they're just harder to find otherwise, but its mostly a last
| resort these days given that Amazon doesn't care to curate
| what is on their "shelves".
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| I love it in terms of consumer experience. I like several
| products from AliExpress and the like, but sometimes find
| they're available for the same price or cheaper and faster
| with better customer service from Amazon. I don't care that
| they have generic brand names in either case
| idopmstuff wrote:
| I'm with you. I don't really understand the complaints,
| since Amazon's return policy means that you aren't really
| taking a risk when you buy, even from randomly-named
| brands.
| jen20 wrote:
| That rather depends on your ability to evaluate what you
| get. I have no qualms telling non-technical people "buy
| USB-C chargers from the Apple Store", knowing perfectly
| well what quality I will get. However, you can't even
| guarantee you'll get something genuine from Amazon
| anymore even if you select that exact same product.
| jacobgkau wrote:
| Exactly. And most people think, "well, I'm super
| technical, so I'll know," but that only works for your
| own field. I can tell if a USB-C charger is genuine or
| not, but I know that I don't know enough about clothing
| irons or magazine sleeves or a hundred other items to
| tell if it's crap or not within the return period.
| Sometimes, I may never know if I don't try a different
| one for an extended period of time.
| e_hup wrote:
| There are negative externalities caused by buying and
| returning stuff.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Not all harms of using inadequately QC'd or deceptively
| marketed products are adequately remedied by a reasonably
| easy return and refund policy.
| zamalek wrote:
| Especially when those retuns usually go to landfill
| instead of being restocked
| dragonwriter wrote:
| I was thinking more of from the individual consumer
| perspective rather than diffuse externalities, but that's
| a good point as well.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| An easy example of the harm:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B90_SNNbcoU&t=1688s
|
| I'll just return the fuses to Amazon after my family
| burns up I guess.
|
| Now expand that to people buying supplements, bolts
| holding things in place that can harm people, etc from
| Amazon.
| gs17 wrote:
| > Amazon's return policy means that you aren't really
| taking a risk
|
| Depends how much you buy. If you end up returning too
| much stuff, Amazon will ban you.
| turtlebits wrote:
| If the quality sucks (or at least doesn't match
| expectations), return it. Shipping is fast and returns are
| easy. The vendor takes the consequence of the return.
| Rarely do I buy product that has subpar quality that I need
| to return it. Just do your research.
|
| This is why I still buy from Amazon.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Yeah, and it's not even necessarily a problem with the
| product itself. Sometimes I do want something cheap and
| disposable. The problem is that you have roughly zero
| information about the retailer, and manufacturer, and anyone
| in between. If one product listing gets bad reviews, someone
| can spin up 5 more listings with slightly different metadata.
| It's effectively a Sybil attack against the reputation system
| of the market.
| jillyboel wrote:
| It's all just the same crap you'd find sold by a "proper"
| retailer. Where do you think they get their stuff from?
|
| I'll gladly take the cheaper alternatives instead of being
| charged 2 or 3 times the amount I'd pay if I import it
| myself.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| There are flecks of gold in the midst of all that dirt.
|
| I needed to make a 3/4" hole in a 1/8" thick mild steel angle
| to repair a cart. Didn't have a drill bit that size and
| quickly realized that a hole saw would be a better choice.
| Off to Amazon. After some browsing, found the same 3/4"
| carbide-tipped holesaw from a million resellers. Found a
| package of two for $13. Following the logic of "even if they
| only last for one hole, it's still cheaper than buying a good
| drill bit that I'll never use again", I ordered it. Item
| arrived and it looked as cheaply made as the photo!
|
| But what do I have to lose? For $13, it's worth a shot.
|
| Chucked up the holesaw, dripped some cutting oil on the metal
| and went to work. Fricking thing went through the steel like
| it wasn't even there. I was fully expecting that the teeth
| would chip off and go flying about halfway through, or it
| wouldn't do crap and the metal would work-harden, making my
| job even harder or worst case, the entire flimsy-looking
| thing would shatter (I have excellent safety glasses BTW).
| No, about 1 minute later I had a nice clean 3/4" hole with
| perfect edges that didn't even need deburring.
|
| That led to the first Amazon review that I ever wrote: I was
| that shocked at how well it performed. Turned on my (Amazon-
| bought) stick welder and finished the repair.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I think the key is to have a sort of risk framework. Things
| that handle data, are a fire risk or are direct knockoffs
| avoid.
|
| Otherwise it's often a good value, and sometimes the
| "brand" name is really the knockoff with a trademark on the
| box.
|
| The carburetor on my leaf blower failed and needed a
| rebuild. The "name brand" kits were $40-60 at Home Depot
| and Lowe's. I got some random kit on Amazon that was the
| same main part, with a different (and better) kit of tubes,
| etc than the retail one.
|
| Same thing with clothes. I've had great luck with workout
| clothes, my girlfriend did well with dresses and other
| stuff. Just be smart about it -- $10 jeans are gonna be
| garbage.
| dingnuts wrote:
| it's the whole point of the tariffs. China does an end run
| around all of our laws, consumer safety, human rights, workers
| conditions, intellectual property, all that, and in doing so
| they cut costs and beat domestic companies at the market.
| Tariffs are a tax we charge to represent those things they have
| immorally refused to do while participating in our market.
|
| A country can't effectively have things like a minimum wage
| while allowing completely free trade with countries that use
| slave labor and don't share your values, because they can beat
| you on price by using human suffering as a competitive
| advantage, and put you entirely out of business.
| synergy20 wrote:
| after 50 years of de-industrialization in US, it's a sad fact
| that US can no longer produce most of those items, yes it's
| totally gone. It will take a few decades to rebuild, if
| possible at all. For now, whatever those junks are at Amazon,
| there are not many options to procure them elsewhere.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| You want the US to spend the next few decades retooling to
| ... build junk?
| synergy20 wrote:
| Build essential stuff locally, not junk of course. Or
| else the virtual economy can not sustain forever based on
| borrowing money while producing very little locally.
| roboror wrote:
| What is "essential stuff" to you?
| tpolm wrote:
| well, produce own steel. Own processors, own drug
| precursors...
| jimbob45 wrote:
| This weird demoralization has to stop. We went to the moon
| in less than 10 years from beginning the Apollo program.
| It's less than 10 years to build a nuclear power plant on
| average. We deployed the COVID vaccine worldwide in less
| than one year. Manufacturing is not _that_ hard. If we want
| to do it, we can do it and we can do it quickly.
| aaronbaugher wrote:
| True. The biggest impediment to increased manufacturing
| is the pile of onerous regulations, many of which were
| created by the stroke of a pen since 2008, and which can
| be removed by another stroke of the pen.
| dttze wrote:
| The biggest impediment is the misallocation of capital
| and the lack of regulations controlling corporations.
| ThenAsNow wrote:
| Do you have any substantiation for either the point that
| onerous regulations are the primary impediment or that
| most of these have been created since 2008 (by fiat or
| otherwise)?
|
| It's always going to be cheaper to make things in places
| where labor costs and environmental responsibility
| expectations are low.
| maxwell wrote:
| > It's always going to be cheaper to make things in
| places where labor costs and environmental responsibility
| expectations are low.
|
| Yeah, offshoring was mostly about driving down costs by
| laundering labor and environmental law.
| neogodless wrote:
| Do you mean this is the point of a carefully planned,
| deliberated, executed, and announced tariff rollout, or do
| you mean that's the whole point of tariffs as they are
| currently being implemented in the United States?
| genewitch wrote:
| The tariffs that were announced during the campaign - the
| same way Ross Perot did - and the reasoning was to bring us
| manufacturing back to the US and reduce the tax burden on
| US citizens? Such as writing off car payments if the car is
| American?
|
| People wigged out over non-reciprocal tariffs, where we
| tariff at 50% what they charge the US. People wigged out at
| 10 flat rate tariffs. "Heard island penguins get charged
| 10%!)
|
| I really have to wonder how important this Chinese _junk_
| is. They make so much junk for the US, that the EU,
| including Von der Lyon, had to make a plan to deal with
| Chinese companies wanting to, and I quote here, "dump" all
| their exports on to the EU market.
|
| The EU is very protectionist over their countries' economic
| outputs and manufacturing. But if the US does that...
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| The weird thing about Heard Island is that it was
| specifically called out in a list that did not even
| include every country.
|
| It wasn't that a flat 10% tariff implies that even non-
| populated islands have a 10% tariff.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| well to be fair to parent, the tariffs weren't exactly
| rolled out in a sane fashion and a lot of credibility was
| lost along the way, though it certainly was entertaining
| if you're a sicko like me.
| Propelloni wrote:
| The USA and the EU more or less have had even import
| duties. The USA averaging out at 1.47 % and the EU at
| 1.39 %. [1]
|
| The EU has been advocating for a free-trade agreement,
| the TTIP, with the USA from 2013 on. It was buried in
| 2016 by the 45th president of the USA, who somehow
| thought it unfair. The EU has proposed a free-trade
| agreement only a few weeks ago. [2]
|
| You may believe what you want, but at least in dealings
| with the USA the EU has always promoted free trade. Even
| Fox News acknowledges that ;)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ta
| riff_ra...
|
| [2] https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/european-union-
| ready-neg...
| emptysongglass wrote:
| Hold on now. For _consumers_ , the only thing that's
| mattered as far as we're concerned is the fact the US had
| de minimis, which effectively meant no duties paid on all
| relevant goods a US consumer might want.
|
| The EU, on the other hand, has made buying goods from the
| US, for _consumers_ , horrifically expensive, including
| reducing the value of non-duty paid goods to essentially
| zero and leaving it up to EU member countries to decide
| if they then wanted to charge an additional "inspection
| fee" often more than the value of the goods themselves.
| Spoiler: those countries did.
|
| So, your point isn't really relevant from a consumer
| point of view. The EU and its member states have tried
| every dirty trick in the book to make it as awful as
| possible to buy anything from the US.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| If readers believe I am making false claims, please
| _engage_ with me. I live in Denmark, as a Dane, and this
| is what I and any Dane who has bought goods from the US,
| has experienced directly.
|
| The actual, _lived_ experience is far different than
| whatever any bloc or country may claim (such as being in
| favor of free trade). The EU has always been economically
| protectionist, since its birth.
| Propelloni wrote:
| Hey, thanks for pointing _de minimis_ out.
|
| For those not in the know (and too lazy to look it up
| ;)), _de minimis_ rules for customs duties set a
| threshold below which no import duties are applied. The
| _de minimis_ threshold for the USA used to be 800 US$
| (and for now continues to be for all but imports from
| China), the _de minimis_ threshold of the EU is 150 EUR.
| In other words, if you import goods worth less than 800
| US$ into the USA from the EU no duties are applied. If
| you import goods worth less than 150 EUR from the USA
| into the EU, no duties are applied.
|
| There is also a tax _de minimis_ , which is a threshold
| when you have to pay sales and possibly other taxes, e.g.
| luxury, alcohol and so on. Obviously those taxes differ
| from country to country in the USA and the EU, and, for
| example, importing bourbon whiskey into Denmark would be
| more expensive than into Germany because of the way
| alcohol is taxed. But the _de minimis_ determines when
| those taxes even apply. The USA leverages those taxes
| from a threshold of 800 US$ (again, not any longer for
| imports from China), while most EU nations set this _de
| minimis_ threshold to 0.
|
| Merchants usually combine all these costs (duties, taxes,
| fees, insurances, shipping, etc.) into something called
| the "landed costs" [0]. Relevant taxes and fees are
| higher in EU nations than in the USA, which explains most
| of the differences, but you are quite right, the WTO
| considers the USA's landing costs fairer than those of
| most EU nations (Germany is especially bad.) I have no
| special insights but I guess this is because Intra-EU
| trading is devoid of duties, fees and taxes (it is a free
| trade zone after all).
|
| If you want to poke around a little in the various
| trading nations of the globe, [1] has a nice database
| available.
|
| So, I do not agree with your conclusion that the EU is a
| protective lock box, but could improve. Thank you for
| pointing this aspect out. It is easy to forget about
| nuance and how complicated and convoluted some of these
| things can be.
|
| [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/landed_cost
|
| [1] https://zonos.com/
| emptysongglass wrote:
| You've done a good job of explaining the relevant de
| minimis rules, but you've deflected or minimized the EU's
| fault.
|
| Inspection fees, duties and taxes make it so functionally
| no Danish consumer bothers to purchase goods shipped from
| the US. For Americans to then come rushing to our aid
| when us poor Europeans are getting a dose of what we've
| been giving for decades is ironic, to say the least.
| eCa wrote:
| > reduce the tax burden on US citizens
|
| Do you consider the tariffs to be a (tax) burden on US
| citizens?
| maxwell wrote:
| Only on those who buy imports.
| neogodless wrote:
| This seems to assume that everything can be imported _or_
| acquired domestically. But tariffs implemented in other
| countries are much more specific. It makes sense to use
| tariffs when you have the capability to meet your
| domestic demand with domestic supply. Indiscriminate
| tariffs catch things where demand far exceeds domestic
| production, whether that 's raw materials, specific
| foods, or things that will take a long time to ramp up
| production domestically.
|
| Ultimately, lots of things manufactured domestically will
| still increase in price because of the raw materials they
| require.
| mbesto wrote:
| Please do explain how one can purchase coffee beans from
| anywhere but a country close to the equator?
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| The tariffs were announced with no plan to bolster on-
| shore manufacturing.
| burningChrome wrote:
| The main purpose of tariffs is to change behavior for
| both the consumer and the manufacturers.
|
| Auto manufacturers have been doing this for decades when
| the US started imposing tariffs on Japanese manufacturers
| back in the 1970's. To get around the tariffs and still
| get access to the US markets, they would simply assemble
| the parts of the cars here and bypass the rules of the
| tariffs. Many companies then started doing the same.
|
| This effectively changed the behavior of the companies to
| avoid the tariffs. The end result was more manufacturing
| and assembly plants here - even though most of the big
| production tasks of the vehicles were still done
| overseas.
|
| Also, there's already been several announcements of
| companies moving their manufacturing to the US in order
| to avoid getting hit with tariffs:
|
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nvidia-
| commits-500-billion-to...
|
| _Nvidia (NVDA) on Monday said it will produce up to $500
| billion of AI infrastructure in the US within the next
| four years as the tech industry looks to bolster its
| domestic manufacturing footprint in the face of Trump 's
| approach to trade policy and desire to onshore more US
| heavy industry._
|
| Also, Ford made some moves to avoid both US and European
| tariffs:
|
| _Less than a week after the White House announced its
| comprehensive set of tariffs, the Dearborn automaker
| exclusively revealed to Ford Authority its comprehensive
| plan to relocate all of its assembly plants to Hawaii.
| The move will be made possible by state of the art 3D
| printing technology and has the support of the United
| Auto Workers._
|
| _In any event, Ford envisions Hawaii as an export hub
| for markets outside North America and a key pillar of the
| company's domestic production capabilities. Ford will
| utilize an obscure maritime law from World War II as a
| way to get completely around European and Asian tariffs,
| as the original intent of the legislation enabled private
| companies to avoid punitive trade measures to get badly
| needed supplies to the Allies at the height of the
| conflict._
| mbreese wrote:
| You're missing a link for the Ford news. Dare I ask when
| you read about Ford moving production to Hawaii? Was it
| in early April by chance?
|
| https://fordauthority.com/2025/04/ford-will-avoid-trump-
| tari...
|
| _> We'll have more on this never, because this was our
| final April Fools' article for 2025. We hope you enjoyed
| all of them!_
| burningChrome wrote:
| Ooooof. They got me. Ironically, this is the first
| article in many different search results with several
| other articles about how Ford will deal with the tariffs.
| With another article from Ford Authority on the same
| topic:
|
| https://fordauthority.com/2025/03/ford-taking-broad-
| steps-to...
|
| _In addition to scrutinizing its supply chain, Ford is
| also in the process of stocking up on parts that comply
| with the current U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and it's
| also taking a second look at its operations in those
| countries, according to Automotive News. Ford is
| "strategically stockpiling components where it is cost-
| effective and parts that are not pending engineering
| changes," supply chain chief Liz Door told suppliers in a
| recent memo._
|
| This is what got me. They had this article talking about
| looking at its operations in those countries and then the
| April Fools article which essentially described them
| doing just that.
|
| Although I already knew Ford does most of its
| manufacturing in the US, I should've known better.
|
| Thanks for the heads up regardless.
| realo wrote:
| The Donald tariffs certainly changed my behavior as a
| Canadian consumer.
|
| For example, i stopped buying US wine, US orange juice
| and I keep an eye open for any US made thing I could
| remove from my environment.
| fundad wrote:
| Instead of the US government spending away on
| overcapacity so Canadians can have cheap products, that
| money should go to public housing and healthcare
| subsidies. I think this is better for the US long term
| because agriculture is heavily subsidized and competes
| with housing and other industries for land and labor.
| sanktanglia wrote:
| Oh yeah the money from the tariffs are definitely going
| to go to help average Americans. Oh wait be did this last
| time and 90% of the tariffs went to propping up all the
| industries that went to shit due to reciprocal tariffs
| (soy beans and others) and we never recovered. So many
| countries moved away from us and never came back. That's
| exactly what's going to happen this time, alienating is
| from our allies, almost like it's the point to cause
| chaos and alienation but wait why would trump do that hes
| always been on the up and up before
| fundad wrote:
| I don't expect an insurrectionist to do good for
| Americans.
|
| I also think government spending on overcapacity so we
| can export food is a waste of money and bad for the
| economy and the environment. How many millions of acres
| of soy bean crops do we actually need?
|
| If the market for exported soy suffers because of who
| people voted for, let's reduce the subsidies by n%,
| farmers will plant less won't be able to keep all their
| land and we can return that land to Native Americans.
| This is disruption we need (but won't get because
| murica).
| maxwell wrote:
| Nice, you found Canadian wine and orange juice?
| fundad wrote:
| They can substitute US products with those from plenty of
| nations plowing money into overcapacity and dumping their
| exports on the international market.
| jlarocco wrote:
| But he doesn't need Canadian, only not from the USA.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The former is very much a thing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_wine
| fundad wrote:
| Yes, that's because they are a consumption tax intended
| to replace income tax. the talk of US manufacturing is
| not completely on-the-level.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > People wigged out over non-reciprocal tariffs, where we
| tariff at 50% what they charge the US.
|
| The "reciprocal" tariffs are based on not the tariff
| duties foreign countries imposed on US goods, but the
| trade deficit the US has with said foreign country.
| There's a lot of idiocy in the tariffs, but this was one
| of the loudest complaints people had with them.
|
| > People wigged out at 10 flat rate tariffs. "Heard
| island penguins get charged 10%!)
|
| Because the list of "countries" being charged made it
| clear that it wasn't being based on a list of countries
| as people understand them. Uninhabited islands and
| islands consisting only of US military bases being on the
| list were strong signs of the lack of competence in the
| planning for the tariffs.
|
| And really, that's why people are complaining so hard: it
| is _abundantly_ clear that tariffs are being rolled out
| in a botched manner by incompetent people for inane
| reasons, so whatever positive effect they might have is
| completely ruined and all of their negative effects are
| intensely amplified.
| Amezarak wrote:
| The Heard and McDonald Islands debacle was poorly
| reported on.
|
| It does have its own customs zone, it doesn't fall under
| Australia.
|
| Some years, the World Bank has reported imports from the
| island: https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Coun
| try/USA/Yea...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I assure you the US did not import $1.3M worth of
| machinery from an uninhabited island.
|
| It's a data error. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
| news/2025/apr/04/revea...
| Amezarak wrote:
| I don't think anyone is claiming there's secret industry
| on the islands. But a "data error" is probably
| understating it, that is what did actually appear on the
| bills of lading. Whether it was a bizarre innocent
| mistake or sort of some kind of financial scheme is
| unclear.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| My strong suspicion is someone misclicked a select box in
| a form somewhere.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| ...and nobody bothered checking?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You've never mislabeled a package or letter?
|
| The postal/shipping/logistics service will almost
| certainly have gone "that's not right..." and quietly
| fixed it.
| Amezarak wrote:
| Maybe. That's clearly the likely case for Norfolk.
|
| Do you know if tariffs are assessed based on the country
| of origin in the bill of lading? The Guardian article
| doesn't answer that question. I'd suspect so since that's
| how everyone is counting imports and exports, but the
| Guardian article isn't clear.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| Its abundantly clear that narrative is being driven. Its
| much less clear why, or by who.
| fundad wrote:
| The tariffs were definitely part of the campaign,
| described in detail in Project 2025 and will eventually
| replace higher brackets of the income tax.
|
| This consumption tax is tax policy, not trade policy.
| That was evident when there was not even any discussion
| about excepting manufacturing inputs (neither this time
| nor the 45th administration).
| tshaddox wrote:
| What zamalek describes isn't just that China manufactures
| cheap products. The complain is more about retailers or
| marketplaces (particularly online ones) that encourage
| essentially anonymous, zero-cost seller accounts and product
| listings.
|
| Traditional retailers like Target or Costco also sell a lot
| of cheap Chinese stuff, but they don't have quite the same
| level of junk in their listings.
| aaronbaugher wrote:
| Right. There's always been a range of products from cheap
| to quality. But "cheap" used to mean something that
| wouldn't last as long or that had limited features, but
| that could still be worth the lower price. Now "cheap" can
| mean something that will break the first time you use it,
| at which point is any price low enough?
|
| I bought a garden hose sprayer at Dollar General for $1,
| and it leaked immediately. $1 is so little now that it was
| basically free, but even for free it wouldn't have been
| worth it, and I'm not going to make a trip to get a $1
| refund. At some point, "cheap" is so bad that it has
| negative value, as it only adds clutter and waste.
| Propelloni wrote:
| I can see how hitting the EU with tariffs is going to improve
| human rights ... oh wait.
|
| But on a more serious note, tariffs could have been used for
| what you are saying, and it would have been a beautiful
| thing, but I think we can agree that's not what's happening
| here, can't we?
| maxwell wrote:
| Not sure why the sarcasm. Do we keep picking up the tab
| until they're trampling the entire Bill of Rights?
| sanktanglia wrote:
| The whole point of the tariffs is to cause chaos and if you
| think they have an actual plan boy do I have a bridge to sell
| you
| rstuart4133 wrote:
| > A country can't effectively have things like a minimum wage
| while allowing completely free trade with countries that use
| slave labor and don't share your values, because they can
| beat you on price by using human suffering as a competitive
| advantage, and put you entirely out of business.
|
| Australia (I live there) has free trade, a high minimum wage
| (USD$16/hr) which is strictly enforced, no tariffs to speak
| of, and used to share the same values as the USA (in the last
| 100 days no so much). Australia has been that way for
| decades. In other words: your wrong, despite what "common
| sense" might tell you.
|
| There are far more glaring examples, like Singapore. Almost
| no natural resources to exploit, no tariffs to speak of, and
| a median yearly income of USD$66,000. The USA's median income
| is USD$40,000.
|
| Now look at countries with high tariffs, or even just "higher
| than the USA used to have" tariffs. All of them, and I do
| mean off of them, including China, have living standards well
| below those with very low tariffs. So you are not just wrong.
| Empirical evidence says you have it completely arse about.
| crawsome wrote:
| You may get rid of that, but it's still Amazon. Just recently,
| they fuzzed all their search results further, so when you
| search for something, it will give you lots of stuff you didn't
| search for. Similar to how Facebook Marketplace does.
|
| I think the only way to avoid disappointment is to avoid Amazon
| altogether. Their customer experience is extremely deceptive
| and engineered to make you spend the most money. From the
| featured searches all the way to how it charges you paid
| shipping instead of free at checkout.
|
| We should all feel burned enough at this point and stop
| rewarding them. Bezos purchased the Washington Post for all
| this money, and he won't stop there.
| bahmboo wrote:
| The article is about Temu. Amazon is not mentioned.
| chirau wrote:
| Maybe you should read the article before commenting?
| Section:"Why we care"
| chairmansteve wrote:
| Yeah. I just go to Best Buy. You pay more. Their website works
| pretty well.
| moolcool wrote:
| Worth mentioning though, that BestBuy's website also has the
| same garbage "marketplace" problem as Amazon
| Bluescreenbuddy wrote:
| You can filter them out. For now..
| ronbenton wrote:
| All of them made out of balsa wood yet have 10,000 5-star
| reviews. It's a joke
| ldoughty wrote:
| > I was very pleased with my "[brand name, if applicable]
| toilet seat, (2-pack), premium pure white, toolless
| installation", that I purchased for my family. Would
| definitely recommend it to friends and family. It arrived
| promptly and was in perfect condition. You exceeded your
| current quota please check your plan and billing details.
|
| The above is similar to recent reviews I've seen.
|
| It's infuriating that there is a reliance on user reporting
| to find and report COMPLETELY OBVIOUS fake reviews on Amazon.
| A great example of why competition is necessary, and not just
| from one other entity equally interested in allowing the
| others existing to avoid being a "monopoly"
| Kevcmk wrote:
| https://www.fakespot.com/
| gs17 wrote:
| > It's infuriating that there is a reliance on user
| reporting to find and report COMPLETELY OBVIOUS fake
| reviews on Amazon.
|
| Have they removed reviews you report? I've only ever heard
| of them removing legitimate negative reviews.
| layer8 wrote:
| "I bought this product for my husband and he loves it."
| codezero wrote:
| What's worse, many real brands you recognize sold off their
| brand name a while ago so you're not even getting the product
| quality you might expect.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| It's easy to find "real brands" if one looks outside of Amazon,
| Alibaba, etc.
|
| Surprisingly, I find I am more pleased with purchases I make
| outside of Amazon despite all of Amazon's perks. "Platforms"
| like Amazon and fake "brands" aside, online retailers that only
| sell "real brands" are still around; they never disappeared
| despite Amazon's meteoric rise. Many sell through Amazon but
| also sell outside Amazon, too. Some do not sell through Amazon.
|
| Being born before the internet existed, I started ordering
| products delivered by mail in the catalog era. I am biased
| toward locating "real brands" that have built reputations for
| high quality. I miss these brands. I loved the transition from
| catalogs to websites, but it seems like in the last 10-15 years
| fake "brands" that can offer no promises whatsoever have been
| killing off the motivation for having real ones that guarantee
| high quality.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > It's easy to find "real brands" if one looks outside of
| Amazon, Alibaba, etc.
|
| You have to be careful, though. There are a shocking number
| of legit-looking brands with their own sites that are just
| drop-shipping the same stuff, at an enormous markup. My wife
| found a piece of clothing she liked for $60; a quick image
| search found it (with the exact same images) for $8 on Shein.
| Nice hustle, if you can make it work.
| maxwell wrote:
| Buy American. False Made in USA claims are subject to fines
| exceeding $40k per violation.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Good luck enforcing those on a Chinese drop shipper.
| maxwell wrote:
| You haven't been following the FTC's enforcement?
|
| e.g. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/owner-
| conservative-appa...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > The company is based in Salt Lake City.
|
| Chinese drop shippers aren't dumb enough to pull the scam
| from _within the FTC 's juridsiction_.
| accrual wrote:
| > after he posted a video on social media titled "MADE IN
| AMERICA!" in which he said "he could conceal the fact
| that his shirts are made in China by ripping out the
| original tags and replacing them with tags stating that
| the merchandise was made in the United States".
|
| Or to openly advertise it.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| I've found I buy fewer things in general, and also the things
| I do buy are of higher quality when I do it in person. Might
| even get some useful advice if it's something like a tool.
| Also it's just more fun, especially if it's a nice bike ride,
| walk, or trip on transit.
|
| > And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a
| hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.
|
| https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut
| jacobgkau wrote:
| My girlfriend needed a humidifier last week. Walmart,
| Target, Home Depot, and Lowe's had mostly the same 2-3
| brands of single-room humidifiers, most of which were no-
| name companies that apparently "specialize" in humidifiers
| (i.e. were spun up to be a shell for selling cheap
| humidifiers). We found one Honeywell branded one on sale
| and went with that since it's a legit brand; it was
| defective (lots of reviews online having the same issue),
| so we had to return it and make a decision between
| Walmart's Equate brand and one of the no-name ones from
| Target. She wasn't sure if she wanted a larger or smaller
| version of the no-name one, but we ended up not having an
| option because the Target shelf was empty of the smaller
| ones. Home Depot had the same model for $10 more, but we
| were at Target anyway because they at least had her second
| choice for color, while Home Depot only had her third.
|
| In-person shopping has become just as crappy as online
| shopping, with a lot of the same problems regarding quality
| and brand control. The only difference ends up being less
| options (which could make the experience less stressful,
| except the options are usually presented in some form
| anyway, they're just not available, which makes it
| frustrating). It's largely thanks to big-box stores, but
| it's not like someone can just up and start a small shop to
| sell a particular niche of product (let alone all products)
| with higher quality as easily as you could with a website.
| RiverCrochet wrote:
| Big consumer brands haven't meant anything for a long
| time. Honeywell and GE among those. They all sell their
| name to other manufacturers and have been doing so for
| decades. The best thing you can do is keep the receipt
| and make sure you follow up on returning it or getting
| warranty service if it breaks in those timeframes. It's
| really not worth even trying to do the research on things
| that are less than a hundred bucks. Buy something that
| looks nice, tape the receipt to it, and return
| it/warranty claim it if it acts up.
| hypercube33 wrote:
| On the flip side, I cant find an ice scraper or a pair of
| snow / ski pants in December in Wisconsin in any store so
| the only avenue I have left is order on amazon since the
| other marketplaces are far more expensive. Depends on what
| you're buying I believe.
|
| As far as tools or other general hardware - the stores like
| mom and pop 100 year old hardware stores are amazing and
| have things you probably cant find online sitting on some
| shelf and the owner knows exactly what box its in. I love
| that experience.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| That's a lot more true in USA than Canada. Probably the case
| in other places too.
| mbesto wrote:
| This is why I have a bunch of stock in Shopify. It's slowly
| started rolling out discovery features in its Shop app that
| federates its stores. I try to limit my use on Amazon to
| things I know can't be faked and things that are so much
| cheaper that I can deal with it being fake. My purchasing
| trends have definitely moved toward the edges - aliexpress
| for chinese stuff (that would normally be on Amazon) and
| Shopify for "buy it for life" stuff.
| codazoda wrote:
| Is there a Shopify store? Their website is catered to the
| business they do, which is to setup shop for businesses.
| How do you shop on Shopify?
| wampwampwhat wrote:
| https://shop.app is their federated retail platform
| kristopolous wrote:
| When I went to Shenzhen I found some of these brands with
| stalls in their vast malls. They're real places. As you walk
| through you navigate around an obstacle course of dollies,
| hear endless packing tape and occasionally point out, "oh
| look, there's Owawuwo, I got a cheap projector from them".
|
| Americans can get a Shenzhen-only 5-day Visa on arrival (VOA)
| from Hong Kong through the Luohu entry at the LoWu station
| via the regular MTR. Don't take the HSR, they do not offer it
| there and you will be turned away. You Must go to the office
| at Louhu station, it is the only way. It's easy, just take
| the metro.
|
| Anyways, at LoWu it takes about 45 minutes after doing the
| paper work. It was very easy. Visa approval for Americans
| this exact way is estimated to be north of 98%. Exchange your
| HKD at the government run forex up stairs in the mall after
| entering China, it's a 1.5% commission, best I've ever seen.
| Then pay in cash - your Western credit cards Will Not Work.
| It is a fairly easy day trip - about 45min from Kowloon by
| rail. The 5-day Visa is a Single Entry.
|
| To go to the trading district take Luobao line (#1) to
| Huaqianglu (3 stops). It's a 10 minute train trip or a fairly
| uneventful hour walk if you're up to it. English at the
| trading district and the border mall is ok. Everywhere else,
| not so much.
|
| Recommended. The place is absolutely bonkers.
|
| They have this wildly intricate culture of price bargaining.
| If you're looking to actually buy stuff, you can get amazing
| deals. But I just went as a tourist.
| dixie_land wrote:
| Golden Computer Centre in Sham Shui Po in HK itself is a
| fun destination too.
| plorg wrote:
| I'm going to genuinely miss the bicycle headlight I have
| bought under like 4 different brand names. I won't miss the
| 36 other grotesqueries sold as alternatives and produced by
| the same business and manufacturing environment, but I'm also
| not excited about having to choose between 6 $50 lights of
| similar quality that are locked to a GPS company's equipment.
| It would be great if in 10 years I could get a similar light
| for 25% more than the current price adjusted for future
| inflation. But there's no reason to believe that tariffs are
| going to make American products better, just that it makes
| the cheap products American. And there's nothing else about
| Trump's (or for that matter his Democratic counterparts'-)
| industrial policy to encourage that either.
| qingcharles wrote:
| My favorite is all these letter-soup Firewire-to-USB convertors
| which are just glue and random wires inside and are either
| completely inert or disastrously damaging to your peripherals:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/s?k=firewire+to+usb+adapter
|
| It's fascinating to me that every letter-soup brand is
| competing on a product that is literally fraud.
| jdeibele wrote:
| I literally got a Firewire to USB converter yesterday to try
| and pull video off a DV Camcorder. A video capture card in
| the same price range had worked great for letting me stream
| VHS tapes through OBS Studio.
|
| There are various YouTube videos showing a daisy chain of
| Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 1/2 adapters connected to
| various Firewire cables and adapters. I was hoping to avoid
| all of that but the camera doesn't show at all. Fortunately,
| nothing seems damaged on either side.
|
| I've only got 6 tapes so I'm sending them off to a service
| and sending the adapter back to Amazon.
| cluckindan wrote:
| It's not even possible to convert between USB and FireWire
| without active electronics, as the signals are not
| compatible in the slightest.
| matt-p wrote:
| I mean maybe, but the product will still be made in china.
| apercu wrote:
| Oh no!
|
| anyway..
| thctphr wrote:
| Good, happy to see this!
| m3kw9 wrote:
| No loss there
| buyucu wrote:
| Temu is absolutely amazing. I went from being a frequent Amazon
| customer in 2020 to not having used Amazon at all in 2024, all
| thanks to Temu.
| rtaylorgarlock wrote:
| I'm relatively happy whenever I see negative news about Temu.
| Call it a bias, though my limited data[0] (itself biased)
| supports whatever negative perceptions I have towards Temu. The
| only brand to get 0/100? Why does human exploitation always have
| to pair with the absolute cheapest prices sourced from developing
| countries?
|
| [0]: https://baptistworldaid.org.au/resources/ethical-fashion-
| rep...
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